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diy foam surrounds ?

cubby01

cubby01

aka Buck
I know this could go in DIY but I think stands a better chance of getting some answers here.... What would it take to manufacture a foam surround at home. I assume one would need a mold of some kind and whatever combination of materials is used to create the foam but what else is part of the process?

I know I know - just buy a set from x, y, or z, right - but that's not my question. My question is how are they made? and is is possible to make small batch at home just for the joy of doing so.

-Cubby
 
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3/8" to 7/16" un-pressed foam, a precision machined set of steel tooling, and about a 10-ton stamping press should do the trick. Do not try this at home! :)
 
I tried making my own set of surrounds out of RTV silicone once. Not so good, but I learned.

This site seems to have the right notion, though. Even if you cannot read Japanese, I think you can get the idea from the pictures. It's something I might try myself, one day...

http://wanwanshiba.hp.infoseek.co.jp/eji.htm
 
I would think it would not be all that hard to make a mold out of something and lay some cloth over it and treat it with some silicon something and then trim it out.
 
kfa888 said:
I would think it would not be all that hard to make a mold out of something and lay some cloth over it and treat it with some silicon something and then trim it out.
Click to expand...
You'd want something that is uniform throughout the surround circumference in both mass and flexibility. It should also offer some help to the spider by being a structural part of the cone suspension. Trying to do that without using a precision made mold and machinery that can apply whatever compounds involved would be just about impossible.

Years ago, Grundig and Wharfdale used flat felt as surround material on some of their drivers. In it's day, this was semi-viable when the felt was attached to very light cone bodies and short throw voice coils, but cabinet design parameters today would be skewed because of the inherent breathability (? my spell checker doesn't like that word) of the felt.
 
You might be able to make curved or the old accordian-fold surrounds out of a doped, flexible cloth. Make a mold, saturate the cloth in whatever type of "dope" you have in mind, and compress it in the mold. The cloth's flexibility should allow it to adapt to the mold without (much, if any) wrinkling, and the dope should allow it to set with sufficient rigidity. I suspect that a LOT of experimentation would be needed to get it "right" for a given speaker, though.

Along these lines, it would be fun to make a speaker 100 percent from scratch... screen "dip" your own cone from a home-made slurry (a la paper mache), cast or assemble your own basket, wind your own voice coil, etc... But it would be difficult to make it sound really good! :D
 
M Jarve said:
I tried making my own set of surrounds out of RTV silicone once. Not so good, but I learned.

This site seems to have the right notion, though. Even if you cannot read Japanese, I think you can get the idea from the pictures. It's something I might try myself, one day...

http://wanwanshiba.hp.infoseek.co.jp/eji.htm
Click to expand...

Thanks M Jarve, that's a way cool site. Not exactly what I was looking for but I believe one could certainly do their own with the process given and some experimentation to fine tune things. I may tinker with it when I have some time.

Ran it though google translate
http://translate.google.com/transla...eek.co.jp/eji.htm&sl=ja&tl=en&history_state0=
to get it into english for me.
 
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