Crossover construction techniques

[Willitwork]

Originally posted by wiredmonkey
Due to the size of the caps and inductors I'm thinking its better to secure them on a more solid surface than a PCB and wire them up point to point. Is this the general way it is done?

Indeed it's often done that way when using large air-core inductors, and it's my favourite approach. Although there are large sturdy PCB's designed for such components these are usually made to order and quite costly when purchased individually. They can be very useful for complex crossovers with a lot of components but most of the time it's easier to glue/strap components on a solid piece of wood and solder them point-to-point. Regarding inductor placement I highly recommend you refer to the link provided by Tinitus above, the method allows building reasonably compact layouts even with large inductors.

Some prefer using larger spacing but that often yields huge Xover boards that need to be placed outside the cabinet or in a specially built compartment that is not part of the enclosure volume. Usually such a compartment is built into the base of the cabinet under the bottom panel. Keep in mind that a large crossover can take up a fair amount of volume when placed inside a small enclosure, and sometimes it is not clear if the original designer included the Xover in volume calculations (if you are building a pre-designed system). When it's not mentioned I assume it's not included.

[wiredmonkey]

Wow that link was a real eye opener! Thank you! In retrospect it makes complete sense too... You saved me a painful mistake I was going to build it this weekend

[gedlee]

It's best to get all the inductors as far away from each other as possible. I just mount all the components on the back panel with Nylon Terminal strips http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a...STRIP/-/1.html - just cut them up and screw them down.

A mechanical connection is much better than a soldered one anyways.

[Willitwork]

Originally posted by gedlee
It's best to get all the inductors as far away from each other as possible. I just mount all the components on the back panel with Nylon Terminal strips http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a...STRIP/-/1.html - just cut them up and screw them down.

A mechanical connection is much better than a soldered one anyways.

This is a great idea! As a precaution though one should not mount the crossovers on the back panel until they are absolutely sure they're done working on it, obviously.

I hope you don't mind me posting a link to the document on your own site that explains this with a detailed picture (on page 4) of one of you're crossovers.

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Asse...anual_noXo.pdf