Ribbon Microphone Corrugator

thingiverse

In my relentless pursuit of the perfect ribbon microphone in every studio, I created a tool to help corrugate ribbons for ribbon microphones. To make a high-quality ribbon microphone element, you need to put small folds in the ribbon, giving it flexibility and allowing you to apply proper tension when mounting it into the truss. Many methods exist, but ultimately everyone relies on gears. I wanted a sophisticated tabletop unit that was automated, freeing my hands to feed the ribbon in and catch it on the way out. Using some gears, I designed a 3-D printed frame, a stepper, Arduino, and a footswitch to make corrugating your ribbon microphone elements easy and consistent. Crafters can also use it for crimping ribbons. The full project is available on Instructables, along with parts sources and Arduino code. Please check it out. http://www.instructables.com/id/Ribbon-Corrugator-crimper-for-Ribbon-Microphones-A/ Next up in my queue is a fully automated Ribbon element tuner. Simply put a ribbon microphone truss into a carrier, lay the ribbon in, secure one end of the ribbon, and let the other be held down on a sliding part. It will automatically inject a user-selectable frequency at user-selectable amplitude, while a stepper adjusts the tension for optimal gain. Then secure the other end of the ribbon. You should then have a perfectly tuned ribbon element. At least that's the plan, but I'm sure I'll encounter several challenges. The trick here is designing a set of interchangeable carriers for various different ribbon microphone trusses. Choose the carrier for your mic truss, such as an MXL R80, put the truss in the carrier, and the carrier in the tuner, and you're ready to go. Once done with that, I'll revisit this corrugator, modifying it for 1" wide gears with a diametrical pitch of 64 and a larger stepper. But since custom-made gears are so costly, this will take some time to get back to. I hope you find this useful, and I look forward to any suggestions you might have.