[MuZo2]

vacuum

air pressure

pressure meter integrated and sealed to the cup 

 

[bootdsc]

  Just stumbled upon this thread. Just amazing! Here is my idea:
 
Print a fully sealed can design with a vent for experimenting with air pressure instead of cotton (or any other) damping.
 
This means - you start printing until you have baffle with driver frame, then put the driver inside and continue to print until it's fully sealed and done (I don't mean you to bake the driver in solid plastic but a normal cup with air inside). Like I said, for damping I would experiment with different air pressure - starting with full vacuum and slowly letting more air in. The prototype would need to have a pressure meter integrated and sealed to the cup for exact experiments.
 
Edited for more clarity.

I think your missing the point of dampening material and closed headphones still have vents but normally somewhere inside the place your ear rests. Now for the 3d printing you cant just easily start and stop the machine, then you also have to deal with the heat. Not only is the print head 200c the build platform is 100c which is plenty hot to damage drivers given they will be baking away for 3 to 9 hours for a large print. If you could overcome all of that it might be a interesting manufacturing technique being able to print interwoven plastic support while using a pick and place to build the circuit. 

 

[PalJoey]

There's a thought - could you print a set of headphone cups with a nice smooth presentable exterior but a massively porous inside surface, like KEF's A.C.E. approach? - http://www.hometoys.com/emagazine/2004/02/kefs-new-ace-technologyits-all-to-do-with-size/1725
 
 
Or would that be a bit of a bugger to programme? Something fractal, perhaps, might do the same job, at least down to the minimum resolution of the printer in question.

 

[MuZo2]

  There's a thought - could you print a set of headphone cups with a nice smooth presentable exterior but a massively porous inside surface, like KEF's A.C.E. approach? - http://www.hometoys.com/emagazine/2004/02/kefs-new-ace-technologyits-all-to-do-with-size/1725

 

 
Or would that be a bit of a bugger to programme? Something fractal, perhaps, might do the same job, at least down to the minimum resolution of the printer in question.

I think thats what Mr Speaker does it for Alpha dogs?

 

[PETEREK]

Kind of, I think the webbing in the Alpha Dogs is to fix the recessed mids while keeping the volume in the cups big for staging.

 

[bootdsc]

  Kind of, I think the webbing in the Alpha Dogs is to fix the recessed mids while keeping the volume in the cups big for staging.

The webbing is just how the infill is handled on a 3d printer if you don't make it solid infill. Print time and weight are more likely to be the reason behind not giving it a solid infill. Also it looks like there is almost no space left at all behind the drivers which makes sense for a ortho.

 

[PETEREK]

So you're saying there's no air passing through the webbing? That wouldn't be possible because the bass adjusting screw is on the outside of the cup above where the headband attaches so there has to be air passing through. It isn't a solid wall.

 

[bootdsc]

So you're saying there's no air passing through the webbing? That wouldn't be possible because the bass adjusting screw is on the outside of the cup above where the headband attaches so there has to be air passing through. It isn't a solid wall.

Well I have only seen the pictures so If someone out there has a pair and is willing to open them up to provide confirmation that would be nice. As for the bass adjusting screw there is a tiny slot that runs all the way through and that screw covers or exposes more of that slot which really is vary small and almost seems pointless yet that's all it takes. 

 

[graphidz]

I wonder if you can share the measurements of the cup?

 

[khbaur330162]

I think this is a sick thread. Are there any people out there thinking about an "Open Source" audiophile community where we share ideas freely on printing our own -and/or simply where to source- various headphone parts, including drivers such as electrostatic or planar magnetic designs? I think it'd be really cool if there were DIY headphone designs and headphone kits just like the DIY amplifiers and stuff. If that community existed would this be our thread, or might we think about making a separate forum for all the possibilities that that might create? I mean, DIY IEM's (balanced armature drivers can be bought for relatively cheap, ear impressions can be made for "pennies," 3D printing and scanning is getting to the point you could just print your own custom ear molds pretty soon, although it's probably not there quite yet), 3D printable enclosures or volume knobs, or just various parts that are cost efficient to print, DIY headphone frames/cups that would allow for various baffle chassis to snap into place that could be surrogate homes for a slew of different (possibly -hopefully even- home brew planar) drivers, etc. Like that's such an awesome community I can't even imagine where all that would lead to down the road, and it would mostly be free, or cost of parts, plus the time/knowledge needed to design these things in a 3D environment (as well as time/knowledge to design and set up our 3D printers and where/who to source materials from) so we can print everything. And for people who don't want to go down that rabbit hole, other people with the time, knowledge and equipment can print kits and/or preassemble these kits for other people at the cost of whatever that's all worth to the involved parties.
 
To tell the truth, I don't even have a 3D printer yet, nor any of the equipment needed to "print" my planar magnetic diaphragm design, but I've got some ideas on building a (at least imo) pretty sick planar magnetic driver inspired by a lot of the vintage cans that I've auditioned/owned/sold/drooled over over the years, while attempting to stay true to the original "cheap bastards" mentality of the Ortho Roundup thread. I came here to tell you guys all about it as well as share my CAD designs with you but then realized I was rambling about my own project and you might not be interested. So, do people want to make a separate forum where we design/build/tweak headphones and learn stuff with/from each other "for free," and if so, where do I sign up, or who wants to build it, because I've got some stuff I'd like to post that I think might interest a few people.?

 

[MuZo2]

I think you designed the layout for diaphragm for ortho. Were you able to produce it? I think with ortho if that becomes reality we can come up with rest of the design easily . magnet assembly etc. Some can be printed or machined.
Seems because of conductive ink it can become a reality soon to produce DIY ortho drivers soon.
 

 

[khbaur330162]

So far I've designed a rudimentary planar magnetic circuit layout, yes, and I've only gotten maybe halfway through the process of creating an active planar magnetic diaphragm. The resolution on the current design can probably go even finer given the methodology I think I've pieced together in my mind to make it, but I don't yet have the equipment. I've found a very interesting supplier of flexible Copper-clad Kapton. Very thin substrate layer options and ample conductor width for a good amount of power handling. Might even serve well in a portable (40-55mm flavor) ortho driver, Idk. But this new Peachy Printer that's currently in Beta is like $120 shipped to the states. I'm thinking with the right software tweaks you could get the 405nm laser to expose your circuit artwork into a photopolymer film like PurEtch which you've laminated the diaphragm material with. I'm guessing the laser in combination with PurEtch film can achieve really high resolutions which could make designing more complex diaphragms kind of interesting.
 
Conductive ink tends to have a very high resistance per unit of measurement. Through my journey of attempting to design a low user-cost ortho driver (I've spent a lot of money, but that's besides the point) I found conductive ink wasn't quite ready for this application. A lot of these inks needs a sintering process, many of which iirc are at temperatures above a lot of the melting points of the diaphragm substrates we want to use. Maybe conductive inks will get better? I don't know, but still, for it to be cheap to the end user the ink needs to be compatible with cheap, consumer-grade printers (piezo inkjet/pigment/die printers being the most likely candidate right now, afaik). And after the sintering process, can the conductive ink oscillate at 20Hz-20kHz without increasing in resistance, or shorting out completely? The reliability of printing an ortho diaphragm via conductive ink is what scares me. But ultimately I think you're right, conductive ink (given it had all the right properties for our specific application) would be a relatively cheap and easy method for people to start thinking about prototyping a driver.
 
I've also designed magnet assemblies for the diaphragm circuit in mind. Much inspiration drawn from the TDS-15. Head-Fi member nickn suggested laser cut steel retention plates like Amfiton used to help direct stray magnetic flux. Done in a huge group buy it might be something to look into? Not sure what kind of added cost you'd be talking about to explore that option, and depending on the sensitivity we'd be achieving with whatever film/circuit design/magnet assembly we were using at the moment, the cost benefit might not be the greatest, imo. Directing flux could prove to be massively beneficial, however. I have not run this design through FIM to see if the flux even matches up with the current circuit design, let alone even dream of being close to optimal. All of the design phase measurements of everything I've shared here was done by eye and gut feeling, or a few tricks I learned while jumping between programs like MS Paint, Gimp and Sketchup (hence the diaphragm spacers ghost layer hovering over the magnet assembly in below pic). Oh, and the diaphragm spacers started out as straight up scanned images of an actual ECR-500 diaphragm, blatantly stolen. A lot of cleaning up was involved to get it down to a monochrome image, tbh, I don't know my way around any technical programs.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

 

 
 
 

It was made to accept common dimension Neodymium magnets which could be glued in place and sourced relatively cheaply, especially if done in group buys. Not sure on the correct adhesive to use here. Depends on the 3D printer and material you're using to print, I'd guess, and possibly the magnet plating. 
 
Diaphragm circumference of my open source ortho is 100mm, iirc, with a similar radiating surface area to the vintage Fostex T50v1 and all its iterations. Radiating area is shaped after the Sony ECR-electret line of headphones to theoretically reduce diaphragm resonances. The ECR-500 also had these odd rubber dampeners which gripped the diaphragm spacers as seen here which might be an interesting idea to explore, imo:
 

 
 
Circuit layout as it stands:

 
Could be double-sided pretty easily, I think, although human error might get involved in the sound that way (haven't thought of a method), and I'm not sure double sided is worth it? Another thing to maybe look into if it interests you. And again, I'm guessing I could make the lines/widths a lot finer given the Peachy/PurEtch method, the resistance on that circuit might be really, really low given 9um Copper thickness and the total circuit length, which I don't know off hand.
 
Spacers were designed to be laser cut, but they could just as easily be printed in my mind.

 

[Q Mass]

I'd like to ask if anyone has attempted to print a trace onto a diaphragm using a laser printer?

I understand that even a conventional laser printer uses ink which is conductive, and I further understand that the conductivity of that ink probably won't be adequate to the task here, but I'm curious to know if anyone has actually tried it?

 

[MuZo2]

I think there is a project to use conductive ink in printer.
 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597902824/agic-print-printing-circuit-boards-with-home-print
 
 
Peachy Printer to drive laser? I donot undestand this, use of 3d printer to etch circuit artwork?

 

[Q Mass]

Perhaps a better way to phrase my question would be:
Has anyone found a diaphragm material which will withstand the heat of being printed on with a conventional laser printer and ink?


This thread is indeed cool.
BTW I'd definitely subscribe to a thread of the type proposed by khbauer, great suggestion!