Speaker Tube

thingiverse

I got inspired to create this thing when I spotted that PartsExpress had several TV speakers in their buyout section back in January of 2018. I already had two from an older TV, so I designed this speaker tube thing for my wife to listen to podcasts. I wanted it to be super easy to print and assemble, requiring just some cheap eBay parts and eight screws for the speakers. This thing uses a fair amount of plastic. While having a separate shell over the speakers is very easy to put together, it comes with a cost of over 100 grams of plastic. The total project probably weighs in at around 250 grams. You might have noticed the classy white on off-white appearance in one of the pictures - that's because I ran out of my original white and used another spool from a different manufacturer. Print settings: layer height .2, infill 20% I used the following parts: * Lipstick-style USB power bank * 3.5m audio breakout board * Micro USB breakout board * PAM8403 amplifier board with potentiometer * Two speaker drivers, each measuring 30mm x 96mm. The cutout is 25mm x 90mm. On the blank version with no speaker cutouts, the mountable space is 100mm x 80mm. The input board and audio jack were mounted using nothing but hot glue. The PAM8403 was secured with the nut on its potentiometer. This thing sounds great, but it lacks in bass. I added a 4.5 x .5 inch port based on some rough calculations of internal volume. It helps, but don't expect much below 120hz with TV drivers. The audio is crisp and loud and perfect for its purpose. I need to calculate the internal volume more accurately and adjust the port to remove the 180-degree bend and lengthen it more precisely. I noticed whistling/noise from the micro USB hole and screw threads, so I used a bit more glue on the USB port and pipe dope (for plastic) on the threads. Of course, the design works as is, but could use some improvements. Some things to consider are: * Adding a bit more thread on the caps and speaker body * The speaker shell/body should have a notch to keep proper alignment 02/2018 - I added new shells and shrunk the shell/body spacing. Originally, I made the shell to be 1mm interior diameter larger than the body, but this was too much slop. I reduced the size to .6mm, and it works better now (more snug).