Ribbon or planar headphones

[jzagaja]

I strongly suggest practise with small planar headphone. Take a small photo frame and cut kitchen foil using frame glass. Attach foil to frame with scotch tape - chose appropriate tension. Put neodymium magnets in rows (opposite polarity) and attach to the metal sheet. Leave elsewhere. Now cut 50mm wide aluminium tape (to the frame width) as shown on the picture and stick to the foil (hardest step). Connect ending to the headphone out - kitchen radio is ok. Put your frame as close magnets as possible and enjoy. You'll be amazed with the sound. Everything depends on membrane tension. You should hear very deep bass. Checked with Marcus Miler

[Spasticteapot]

Originally posted by jzagaja
I strongly suggest practise with small planar headphone. Take a small photo frame and cut kitchen foil using frame glass. Attach foil to frame with scotch tape - chose appropriate tension. Put neodymium magnets in rows (opposite polarity) and attach to the metal sheet. Leave elsewhere. Now cut 50mm wide aluminium tape (to the frame width) as shown on the picture and stick to the foil (hardest step). Connect ending to the headphone out - kitchen radio is ok. Put your frame as close magnets as possible and enjoy. You'll be amazed with the sound. Everything depends on membrane tension. You should hear very deep bass. Checked with Marcus Miler

This may be a better solution.

I'd like to find a thinner foil, though.

[setmenu]

Nice to see another foray into ribbon headphones.
Here is a pic of a transducer i made a while back, it uses a coil etched on a flexi circuit material.
The pic shown has more turns than the final version.
I have made several pairs of phones using the design , and they sound rather nice.
I still have a new and improved version the transducer on the drawing board, but the project has been on hold for the last few years.

Mark

[Spasticteapot]

Originally posted by setmenu
Nice to see another foray into ribbon headphones.
Here is a pic of a transducer i made a while back, it uses a coil etched on a flexi circuit material.
The pic shown has more turns than the final version.
I have made several pairs of phones using the design , and they sound rather nice.
I still have a new and improved version the transducer on the drawing board, but the project has been on hold for the last few years.

Mark

Sweet!

I've been spending a lot of time wondering how I can get metal on plastic, and you seem to have solved the problem quite nicely.

Any chance you could post those plans?

[setmenu]

If you can track down some suitable flexi laminates , it's a matter drawing them and finding a suitable company who can photo etch them for you in small quantities. [finding the laminate in small quantities can be hell too!]
we are talking of adhesive-less laminates as thin as humanly possible!
I found things just got better the thinner[lighter] things went but that not the whole story.

All my parts were custom, nothing off the shelf.
I sort of got to the stage that to go further I would need to start to spend quite a bit more $$$$ to make things the way i wanted.


Here is a picture of the first transducer i did using hand drawn traces.

[setmenu]

front

[setmenu]

The hand drawn 'ribbon'
The later version use much finer cad drawn traces[and less of them than in the first photo posted] using a much thinner material.

[Spasticteapot]

I've done some toner-transfer printing - I assume that making and etching a set of traces should be pretty simple. However, I've had no luck finding a potential source of laminate. How did you make (or buy) yours, and how did you pleat it?

Also, I note a rather interesting and unusual magnet structure. Care to share details?

[setmenu]

I drew the traces in the picture with a ruler and etch resist ink pen. The dc R came out about 4 Ohm a piece.
The later ribbon trace pattern was drawn up with pcb software.
did two versions of those one with around dc R of around 30 Ohm and one with around 15.

It has been a few years since i last worked on this project so details are not to hand,but sourcing the laminate was a bit of a headache , i was very lucky to get my samples!!
I will try to dig out some names etc


The pleats, or curves were added with a simple press former.
They key was to take out any tension on the ribbon.
This of course also relates to the ribbons own elastic characteristics..

The magnetic circuit is used was end poles pieces= North center pole piece =South.



The phones even with their flaws do sound nice and don't require anything excessive to drive them. [even sounded nice on my portable, all be it a bit quiet]

[Spasticteapot]

Can you diagram the magnetic structure?

Perhaps you have something done in FEMM I could look at?

I'm still learning all this stuff.