Thomas Sanladerer 3D-Printed an Entire Speaker, Complete with Driver

One of the most common uses for 3D printers, particularly in the maker community, is fabricating enclosures for electronic devices. 3D printers let us fairly easily create cases that look far more professional and polished than the Altoids tins and generic plastic boxes of yore. That is certainly true of custom speakers, because 3D printing lets makers create all kinds of unusual speaker box designs. But almost every one of those that you will come across is built with an off-the-shelf speaker driver. Paul Ellis of Polymate3D designed some speakers with printable drivers and Thomas Sanladerer 3D-printed Ellis’ FD52 design to put to the test.

When someone says the word “speaker,” they are usually referring to the entire unit, which includes both the speaker driver and the speaker cabinet (also called a speaker box or simply an enclosure). The cabinet does more than just hold the speaker in place; it also helps to properly project sound and controls the resonance and vibration. But the speaker driver is what is actually producing the sound waves. A standard speaker driver has a permanent magnet and a cone with a coil. When the amplified audio signal is passed through the coil, it produces an electromagnet field that pulls the cone towards the permanent magnet. That happens very quickly and vibrates the cone, which produces sound waves.

The cones in speaker drivers are usually made of paper or a composite material, which is part of the reason that they are traditionally difficult to 3D-print. But Ellis’ FD51 and FD52 speaker designs have drivers that compensate for that with a very thin and rigid cone that is attached to a membrane made from flexible TPU filament. That lets the cone vibrate freely. The drivers need to have their coils hand-wound and permanent magnets need to be added. All of the rest of the components are completely 3D-printed in either TPU or regular ol’ PLA. Sanladerer printed all of the parts and then assembled the FD52 speaker. With a working speaker, he was able to test the design to determine if it is any good at all. As he found, it actually sounds surprisingly good. That was especially true after he performed some DSP (Digital Signal Processing) to level out the range of frequencies. So, if you want an entirely 3D-printed speaker, it seems that Ellis’ FD51 and FD52 designs are worthwhile.