A DIY Ribbon Speaker of a different Kind

[AnthonyPT]

Hi
Whatever the material the RS membranes
are made of I wonder what limited
the consistency of these wave benders.
Was it the suspension or the membrane or
something else? Certainly the RS units
with their bipolar caps benefited from
better caps and other crossover mods. The
French Lineaum derivate used paper which
might be acceptable but until a pair of
Linnys are dissembled and an easy method of
changing the membranes used we will not fully find out
what Mr Pattock discovered and applied in
the Airfoils and the Aero prototypes.

The Aero's Sort of Half U-bend design may require
film/or laminated membrane with special features
which we could benefit by knowing what those
characteristics are. I still believe that maybe
the membranes in the Nearfield S5 and S7 speakers
might lead us to a better solutions when doing
a DIY big Wave bender or just getting the most
out of RS or AURA Linaeums we come across.


Regards

AnthonyPT

[moray james]

get a couple of inexpensive one inch dome tweeters. Remove the dome with a sharp point razor knife. You can apply some real wool felt to overlay the tweeter faceplate suspension and even the pole piece. Now you have a driver platform on which to experiment with all the diaphragm materials you want. Ues your imagination to adapt what ever suitabel materials you have on hand to fashion a diaphragm clamp to fit onto the voice coil and go. I would suggest avoiding having diaphrams which direct energy toward the ceiling/floor try to minimize your room interaction and keep things to the horizontal plane.

[el`Ol]

One can also take a widerange driver and use the wave benders instead of a whizzer.
http://wewewepunkt.ch/page/highfive.php

[moray james]

nt.

[Charcoal]

Did anybody tried to experiment with that driver to diy? I`m interested to try but can not find exact info how the voice coill should be done?

I russian internet there were guys trying to implement usual magnets and voice coils from ordinary loudspeakers.

[Charcoal]

Just found hungarian forum with pictures of DIY:
http://audiodiy.hangszoro.net/viewto...64818b4aa12f50

[moray james]

Search under Paul W. Paddock for patent info onthe Linaeum design. You could use a standard dome tweeter with the dome cut off to drive a set of foils in a similar fashion to the drawing shown on one of the pages on the forum thread you attached. This would be the easiest and least expensive way to build some working models. I have mentioned this before, you could also experiment with using a woven fabric rather than paper or solid plastic foil. I have used silk screen material which is polyester. This works well and you can use open mesh with no loss of high frequency. The mesh material has excellent internal loss qualities. You might want to look into a lower mass material like polypropylene as polyester is a rather dense material. Have fun.

[Charcoal]

Thanks for advices. I`m rather intersted in wideband than tweeter. And was interested if anyone tried it here?

[Charcoal]

Moray, I`m having some problems with understanding what is "mesh"? My translator gives me something like "net" or "cell".

[moray james]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-printing
Take a look at AudioXpress Nov.2002 pages 34 and 36 for a simple way to make what you are after. A 1.5 inch mid dome tweeter would work just as well. The lighter the mass/density of the fabric the wider the response and the better the efficiency. A fabric (woven) screen material used for the diaphragm will have far fewer internal structural resonance issues as compared to a solid plastic diaphragm material. Do not be concerned with pourosity of the material it is not an issue. To obtain even grater internal damping and structural loss you can apply silicon fluid to the fabric diaphragm. This will of course be at the expense of some efficiency. The weaveof the fabric permits the fibers to rub against one another which disapates the (resonant) energy as heat due to friction.