Kwisatz
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2004
- Posts
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- 19
Well, I've had my LCD-2's for what seems like forever now and the original adhesive rings keeping the earpads on eventually wore out allowing them to slide (and make an adhesive mess on the plate they attach to). Audeze sent me new ones upon request, but for whatever reason, the new ones never seem to last long. Eventually after a long session they'll start to fail and the pads will creep. It'll start slowly at first and then quicker as the adhesive continues to degrade. It could have been a bad batch of adhesive rings for all I know, but the way the pads attach bothered me conceptually. However, it was never quite enough for me to do something about it - especially when I've been doing a lot more speaker listening these days.
That changed last week when they failed again. This time it coincided with the addition of a parts cooling fan to my new 3D printer. I figured that now was as good a time as ever to do something to fix the issue once and for all. My first 3D modeling cob job would be a fix for the pad slide. A couple of quick measurements later and I was creating a modified version of the stock black plastic ring that's inserted into the back of the earpad. The new version has internal tabs with pegs attached that fit into the corners of some of the driver plate slots. This basically locks the pad support ring in place preventing any lateral movement, and thus any sheering force to the adhesive rings. Technically it's good enough to keep the pads in place even without an adhesive ring and the pads wont shift at all in use, but it's not designed to have any real prevention of perpendicular forces so the pads will come off easier than you'd probably want them to.
Lackluster photo of the modified ring in the pad:
Assuming anybody else has ever had a problem with the pads sliding over time and is interested in trying it out, I've posted the STL over on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:454526. The photo I have above is of a previous version before I modified the lower standoffs to clear the pad stitching better. It might work for other LCD variants as well, but I haven't measured the driver plate, so I can't really say for sure.
That changed last week when they failed again. This time it coincided with the addition of a parts cooling fan to my new 3D printer. I figured that now was as good a time as ever to do something to fix the issue once and for all. My first 3D modeling cob job would be a fix for the pad slide. A couple of quick measurements later and I was creating a modified version of the stock black plastic ring that's inserted into the back of the earpad. The new version has internal tabs with pegs attached that fit into the corners of some of the driver plate slots. This basically locks the pad support ring in place preventing any lateral movement, and thus any sheering force to the adhesive rings. Technically it's good enough to keep the pads in place even without an adhesive ring and the pads wont shift at all in use, but it's not designed to have any real prevention of perpendicular forces so the pads will come off easier than you'd probably want them to.
Lackluster photo of the modified ring in the pad:
Assuming anybody else has ever had a problem with the pads sliding over time and is interested in trying it out, I've posted the STL over on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:454526. The photo I have above is of a previous version before I modified the lower standoffs to clear the pad stitching better. It might work for other LCD variants as well, but I haven't measured the driver plate, so I can't really say for sure.