Tell me about it. A few days ago I went to a small woodworking company in my town that offers CNC wood machining services. I gave them a CAD file of a design for a wooden earcup, really simple design actually, could probably make it by hand if I took some time, but can't be arsed, and all they needed was a small 10x10x3 cm size block of wood. They said that cutting one piece out of walnut will cost roughly 150 euros PLUS taxes. I turned and left without saying bye. It's not like you're doing any work, all you do is plug a freaking USB stick into the machine, run the program and stand next to it for 10 minutes while it cuts it. I mean, 150 euros for a piece of wood that costs 3-4 euros if you buy it raw in any wood shop is overkill even if they would carve it by hand and it took 2-3 hours to do. I think some of these companies that do these services are abusing the fact that people don't have CNC machines in their favor, and are charging as much as they possibly can, I guess it's better to have high profit margins and do small amounts of work instead of doing a lot of work with small profit margins...keeps the machines in shape for longer and expenses lower.
And this is the biggest problem. I have a folder with loads of designs and ideas that I'd like to build, earcups, headbands, entire finished headphone designs, down to the final screw. But it's just way, way, way too expensive until I buy my own 3D printer and CNC router. Once I have that I'll probably be able to make parts for and build 3-4 headphones a day. For now, it's pretty much impossible, or as you said, it's better to just buy a high end headphone than to waste money on projects. Good thing I at least found a local 3D print guy who is reasonable with prices.
I also thought about rotating the driver upwards, as I noticed that I usually get an effect of sound coming from slightly above with most headphones, but the problem is if I twist the baffle too much, I might end up with a design that's hard to 3D print, even some simpler baffle designs that I had 3D printed so far were slightly twisted around the thinner parts, that's why I try to keep the designs for printing simple.
Oh yea and I know that HD800 driver DIY thread, that's actually a nice job too, but a bit expensive IMHO, I'd rather just get the HD800's instead of spending the same money for the DIY one that definitely won't end up sounding as good, because the HD800 is just too well engineered. But it reminds me of my old idea.... this is back from the time when I got my Beyerdynamic T1's and wanted the HD800's too but couldn't afford both, so I had this vision of a Beyerheiser T800 of whatever you wanna call it, which would basically be similar to a HD800, fully opened, using either the HD800 drivers or T1 drivers, and it would be the right size for T1 earpads and headband.
Should have been made out of a 3D printed baffle and a anodized aluminium red decorative/strengthening part around it.
I think it looks cool but it would probably cost more to make than buying the new Orpheus.
