A DIY Ribbon Speaker of a different Kind

Yes, the second option would be good. I myself made the magnets extend all the way to the end of the pole plate. But experiments can be useful. In my opinion, the most important thing with the Rubanoid is to prevent reflections at the end of the membrane. This hasn't been discussed enough.
 
out of interest, was the logic of extending the magnets across the entire pole-plate so you could squeeze in more magnets and therefore a stronger magnetic field, or is there a relationship between the plate and the magnets that means keeping them consistent gives you the best use of your magnets

thinking as i type, assuming the magnets are all the same size and strength, then 10 x 25mm magnets in 250mm plates must be a more concentrated mag field than the same magnets in a 500mm plate, for example, right?

Sorry if that seems a simplistic statement to the guys who understand magnetism - but assuming its true, its definitely one thing to add into the mix , and from what i see in previous postings, its not something many others are doing

Awesome - only 1 day into this thread, and i am already having new perspectives and options to try out 🙂
 
? well the coil should be as small as possible compared tot the magnet stack (slightly longer) (so use as litle as metal compared to the length of the magnets and let the coil peep out just above the magnets). ... clearly else halve the coil would be in a weaker field if they would be 30 cm and the magnets only 20cm.

What i thought when i read the post was, a smaller ruba sounds better in the top end then a longer one, and there is also something to say about. since if they are long they act like a line source. and a 30cm line source... does not sound nice. also the top end does not add upp after 6-10cm everything ebyond 10 cm length adds more and more to the lower end. could be nice but could also make it heavy on everything under 3 khz etc
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Hi WrineX - very excited to be discussing this with you. there are 2 main points you raise

On the first, you are certainly supporting to the view that the coil needs to be HIGHER than the magnet stack, and I assume this is for the earlier stated reason that the curve of the coil is outside the mag field, and yes, it follows that the height should be as little as possible outside the magnet stack - except that the measures i took kinda support the opposite, which was the best measures were from a 140 coil (including curves) within a 275 magnet stack, so SHORTER - the one i did where the coil was higher than the magnets (but still shorter than the pole plates) gave the poorest measures of them all, . I can only think that other factors were influencing or masking this, possibly including your line source comment

A little aside at this point - just after covid i did a 3-month consultancy with a Belgian company who made drive units for upmarket cars - they were having some inconsistency with the end-of-line tests, and i laid out a series of design experiments and analysis to pinpoint possible root-causes and the impact of each factor on the final results - the point of sharing is to let you folks know that I am very much aware of interactions between different factors combining in surprisingly different ways, and my intent with this rubenoide project is to treat it the same as i would a professional contract and run, as much as possible, design experiments to understand the correlation and regression across all the factors, and hopefully use it to optimise the design

which is a nice way 🙂 of saying: just because my measurements (so far) don't quite align with what you and Ruba1 are saying is not any indication that your advice or wrong, but more a reflection of what i regularly see in my work - an initial result which deals with only a single factor can often provide results which are misleading - if a result does not align with the logical expected result, its a mistake to immediately conclude that this disproves the logical expected result - its more likely that an important factor was excluded from the experiment

ok - back on your post again, yes, the line source is a good point- my original sample was smaller and i thought sounded better in some ways (but not all) than the current larger ones. the current design (i promise to share more info soon) is actually a 2-way, with the intention that the bottom "unit" is larger and the upper is smaller - as my current poles are 360mm this is a little tricky to mock up so will need some shorter steel, but its great that you are sharing some thoughts around an optimum size of 6-10cm

my trouble is that my brain is a box of frogs on things like this, and i have too many ideas at the same time - for example, i really dont like the idea of elastics to centre, for example, and i am thinking of having a central "spine" where the coil sits, made of thin carbon of similar, and to have it "resting" between 2 rows of adjustable ceramic ball bearings, at the top and the bottom, so the coil can be is perfectly centered and the movement of the membrane is controlled to only be forwards/backwards

i know - probably a crazy idea, but sounds like a fun side-project, right?

thanks again
 
which was the best measures were from a 140 coil (including curves) within a 275 magnet stack, so SHORTER - the one i did where the coil was higher than the magnets (but still shorter than the pole plates) gave the poorest measures of them all,
is the impendance the same ? if you used the same coil but longer/smaller it would change 🙂 also its hard to use femm for instance to see exactly what happens in the middle. it might be a tiny bit stronger then using all of the field in combination with lower impedance. (at the ends there is more steel less magnets, i mean the metal extends further then the magnets) due to the way these motors are contructed. when sing fem you cant model those 🙁 sicne it is 2D
 
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Yeh, impedance was around the same level - its not identical across a the different sizes, but i calculated the turns needed at each size to result in similar resistance - the 140mmm one had a couple of turns too many and was the highest at 8.7ohm (it was calculated at 40 turns, and i may have miscounted.... ) , but all the others were 8.0 or higher

I am certainly not ruling out that the differences were influenced by the resistance

and yes, i was kinda wondering if the field is constant or concentrates out from the centre - that might also influence why a smaller membrane of 6-10 is preferred for high frequencies?

as I said above, i suspect there are many factors interacting, and for sure the impedance could be one of them - after easter i can create a series of membranes at 140mm with different ohm and see what effect it has, beyond sensitivity - but i would like to spend a little effort in doing a proper Design of Experiment (DoE), working out the factors i want to test and running different combinations of them together, as that is the only way that the interactions can be spotted - unfortunately i no longer have the statistical software thar helps with this, so i will need to calculate it myself, so need a nice clear day

I am house and dog-sitting for my old mentor over easter, and he still has the software, so may be able to get some access to help me do the calc.......
 
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