Also, I added a bit more bracing to the inside since plywood isn’t quite as dead a material as MDF:

A little sanding and a little tung oil later:

And done:

The thing weighs a ton… the driver itself weighs 25 lbs, mostly from the magnet but also from the beefy cast aluminum frame.

Pretty happy with it considering everything was scrap materials except for the driver and the stainless screws I used. The same setup from parts-express.com is almost $600. I paid $100 for the driver from a fellow DIY’er. Yay DIY!

For my third pair of DIY speakers (I know… running out of rooms to put speakers in), I decided to try a new style with an open baffle design. The open baffle designs that get most of the press are Linkwitz’s Orions and John Krekovsky’s NaOs but those use really expensive drivers with active electronics requiring multiple channels of amplification. So instead, I’m using one of Paul Carmody’s designs that he has dubbed the Sunflower XT.

It uses dayton reference drivers which are great performers at a good price. I used a few from this lineup for the ZDT 3.5 speakers from the last project as well. Also, it uses a Vifa XT tweeter which is a driver used in many high end designs that is generally accepted as an excellent tweeter with low distortion and great dynamics. Whatever that means.

In any case, here are a few pictures of the speaker in progress.

March 13, 2011

The baffles:

The rears with the cutout and recess for the port:

A little photoshop on what will be the side panels (maple birch ply):

The “box” part glued up:

View of the bracing and foam on the inside:

Side panels cut and just positioned to see what it will look like:

Next step is to do some sanding and bondo-ing before figuring out how to assemble the pieces together and paint. Speaking of which, I think the “box” part is just going to be black. Either a spray textured black or a brushed/rolled on enamel flat black. The plywood sides are going to just have a few coats of a simple tung oil rub. That’s the plan right now anyway. More to come.

March 27, 2011
A few updates:

The “translam” top piece (still needs to be trimmed and sanded)

It will look something like this:

Also, here’s what I think the crossover box top will be:

It’s a remnant piece of hardwood (not sure what species) that I book-ended and sort of-kind of biscuited together with my table saw and a piece of MDF.

It will look something like this (carrying through the translam concept):

Got some glue/water sealing done today also.

March 29, 2011

March 31, 2011
Got some painting done:

April 5, 2011:
Drivers installed and crossovers partially complete:

April 9, 2011
Got the crossovers done an everything wired up.

Ok, let’s get caught up.

Lots of park days! These are from the Westlake Park in Daly City where I USED to play tennis all the time.

After the farmers market, a walk in the mall:

Cheeky monkey: (on a side note, Amanda is likely going to grow up with the nick name Chi-chi. It started out with us calling her Mon-chi-chi after the cartoon character of the early 80′s but it seems to have stuck. Alissa and Ashley also call her Chi-chi more often than not.)

Chunky monkey: (another side note… Ashley is still a good eater.)

Happy Chinese New Year:

One of Bonnie’s dinner ideas:

…with dessert:

Going or a walk… and digging for gold:

Off to the park again:

Yay park!

Denim is in:

Alissa took these:

Abigail’s fifth birthday party:

Finally, another set of speakers in progress:

Me and my helper finishing the framework:

Alissa with Uncles Alan and Calvin enjoying the half finished playhouse. The wall sheating is up and the roof is mostly shingled:

Fully shingled and mostly painted:

Now I just have to finish the doors and windows along with the trim. Alissa wants green windows and a purple door.

Here are some before and after pics:

Today, I got started on a playhouse for the kids. It’s kinda like a mini-shed. But it will have windows, a porch, and a more reasonably graded roof. Here’s some pics of Alissa inspecting my work. Everyone’s a critic.

I did make Alissa work for it a little. Here she is vacuuming up some sawdust:

In the background, you can see the other project that I finished up today. It’s just a bench
I had been working on here and there. It’s a design from “Wood” magazine. My friend Bryan gifted me a year when they offered him a free friend subscription. Yes, I get “Wood” magazine. Mostly, it just makes me feel inadequate… for not having bigger tools. I mean power tools.

It’s just some 3/4″ birch plywood left over from my speaker build with some hinges and knobs. Now, the babies can’t climb in and use it as their fort.

I chose the ZDT 3.5 design, from the same guy who came up with the other pair I built. Since Bonnie wasn’t a huge fan of the all wood look, this design will use a combination of painted MDF and plywood.

Here’s a pic in progress:

And here’s a pic in the later stages of assembly:

3/30/2010 – They’re done! Sort of…

Got everything glued up and wired. I still have to fix the paint that I screwed up while gluing the front and rear baffles. And since taking the pictures, I’ve already made some little outriggers.

They sound pretty darn good. I’ll reserve my thoughts for a more thorough review after they break in a bit and I get a chance to listen to a bunch of stuff. But initial impressions are that the imaging is very good even at close listening distances. The crossovers seem to be doing a very good job as I can’t discern any distortion or other bad behavior. And I think there’s enough bass response for my needs. I have yet to try any home theater stuff, but for music, I think I’ll be happy.

As for build notes, I did make that one mistake with the mid recess but it’s not too bad. Otherwise, I was very happy with the textured paint although I might polyurethane on top of it next time. It tends to hold on to dust and everything else pretty tenaciously.

More to come. In the meantime, here are some pics.

The crossovers are velcro’d to the bottom empty space of the cabinets:

3-channel Beta 22 with a gain of 5
1 sigma 22 with 100VA toroid
Nichicon Muse KZ caps used throughout
Single RCA input
DACT stepped attenuator
Neutrik locking headphone jack
Bulgin power switch
Vampire wire used for input and outputs
Dual enclosures from par metal
Neutrik Speakon locking power cable

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. At this point, I’m getting more efficient at both the case work and the trouble shooting and have enough experience to just build these without putting too much energy into the detailed layout and planning. And of course, it sounds fantastic!

Here are the specs:
INPUTS:
1. Toslink optical
2. USB
3. Coax S/PDIF

OUTPUTS:
1. K1000 balanced
2. XLR balanced
3. TRS single ended
4. RCA preamp

ENCLOSURE:
1. Custom machined Par metal case with solid birch front panel

POWER SUPPLY:
1. +/- 15V Dual mono bipolar power supplies for the analog sections.
2. Dual 5V power supply for the digital sections (Toslink, 4:1 Mux, Buffalo)

MISC:
1. e24 relay circuit triggered by an LED ring Bulgin momentary switch.
2. Man hours: Probably about 100 all told.
3. Birch panel was cut and then routed for the radiused edges and milled for the center stepped hole. The hole was stained with a pecan finish before tung oiling the remainder of the piece and then sealed with a few layers of polyurethane with light sanding in between coats.
4. It sounds fantastic!

You can see her all ready to go with her lunch box and everything. She’s going three days a week and so far so good. She had a few small issues, but for the most part, the teachers said she was doing fine… and talks a lot… and wants to help with ev.er.y.thing. I think Bonnie was probably the most effected by it. Her little girl is growing up! I have to admit that I did have some separation anxiety when I dropped her off each of the three days. But I stayed disciplined and didn’t even call to see how she was doing. (Instead, I relied on Bonnie’s phone calls and subsequent reports.)

In other Alissa news, she finally made some good progress with potty training. She had a couple accidents here and there, but nine times out of ten, she’s able to tell us that she needs to go potty and makes a successful, “deposit.”

With all the success, her crayon box has become quite full. (She gets a new crayon and an M&M with every successful attempt.) The cheapo plastic box that she uses to hoard all these crayons has pretty much been defective since day one so I used some scrap wood from my other projects and a hinge I stole from a binder to make her a nice wooden box. I still need to get a latch for the front, but it’s pretty much done.

It’s mostly 1×3 solid birch and 1/4″ birch plywood. I put a 1/4″ dado on the bottom to accept the bottom panel and made the lid with some 1×2 that I ripped to about 3/4″x3/4″ with a rabbet to accept the top panel. It’s just glued together since I’m lazy and didn’t want to fill in nail holes. Plus, I figure it’s only going to hold crayons so the not insignificant strength of wood glue should be plenty strong enough for this little box. Finally, I put a 1/4″ radius on most of the edges so if/when Alissa drops it, there’s less chance of her damaging our hardwood floors. Oh, and the finish is a couple coats of Minwax cherry stain with polyurethane. Fun little project. Learned a lot. Specifically that my woodworking skills still leave a lot to be desired.