So my friend and I have decided to try to make our own DIY magnetic planar headphone, (just the drivers for now,) anyhow we've got magnet plates incoming, as well as an attempt at our diaphragm. Well as DIY as special ordering a flex circuit trace and cnced magnet plates and anodizing them myself can be anyhow. Maybe at some point in the future I will get my own personal CNC operation up and running but I need to move somewhere with more space first. I doubt if I will be able to fund my own thin film deposition operation any time soon though :(.
I realize this is not really the place to ask, but does anyone have any insight into modeling magnetic fields of permanent magnets (I'm using Maxwell 3d) to help with decisions about future magnet placement, "ideal" trace lines etc? It will still be about a month out until we have the current cnced magnet plates delivered and can see if it works at all, but once they arrive I might post pics...
Or possibly any insight into requesting specific materials for the diaphragm, at the moment it will be on a 12μm thick kapton layer. That is not that descriptive as there are several varieties of kapton but oh well. Should I definitely try to go thinner? I chose this size for now because I wouldn't have to special order the diaphragm material for now as it was a standard size from my current source for such things. (In the interest of cost for my first prototypes.) I understand that people use AL for the traces because by density it is more conductive than cu, but my initial prototype will also use cu, again in the interest of cost to myself.
Any good sources of information about such drivers would be appreciated as well, I am currently running off some random info from
http://www.magnepan.com/magneplanar_technology
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/how-planar-magnetic-headphones-work
and http://wiki.faust3d.com/wiki/index.php?title=Isodynamic_%28aka_orthodynamic%29
Right now I am just hoping it will make sound at all to be honest. Not really expecting it to sound good right now, but if I can't get so much as a whisper out of it I am going to be one sad panda.
