School project exhibition tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day when all third year high school students will show off their projects at an exhibition in the city centre. I will bring most of my stuff with me there. Speakers, amplifier, cables, computer, two monitors, camera and some other stuff, like a subwoofer driver, 41Hz amplifier board and so on. I have already started packing some of the small stuff, but I'll do the rest tomorrow morning. Since I don't have my driver's license yet and my parents are not home I will have a friend help me drive all the the stuff downtown. I'm really excited, I hope it will be a good day. I have made a playlist with lots of different songs and I have made picture slideshows of my DIY work (kind of all pictures that are here on the blog).

I was planning to start writing part #1 of the step-by-step construction guide today but unfortunately I ran out of time. But here's a sneak peek ;)

As a little side note. I will be building two more amplifiers in the coming weeks. One is already sold and I'm hoping to sell the other as soon as possible too. If you're in Sweden and you want a O2+Odac combo, don't hesitate to send me a message!

Mud, water and bolts.

I was in the city today. I brought my bike with me on the train to be able to travel faster when searching for M6 insex bolts and M6 t-nuts. I started with biking 4km to a shop I thought had what I needed. They didn't have any. The told me to go to another place. So I did, I biked another 1.5km to the next place. They didn't have any either and told me to go to a third place about 500m away. They had the insex bolts so I bought 16 of them for 17SEK, good price!

They didn't have any t-nuts though, so I asked them if they knew any place that had. They told me to go to place #4 about 2km away. I went to that place and they only had four left. But they told me about a fifth place about 5km away that definitely had M6 t-nuts. Problem was I had to go to the dentist so I didn't have time to go there. I had to head home with only the bolts, no t-nuts. My bike was dirty like never before, so was my shoes, my jeans, my jacket and backpack. This is a bad time of the year for biking in the city!

But to brighten up my day I just ordered some stuff from Thomann.

Speakon connectors for the speaker cables. 2x4mm speaker cables, damping material, connector cable between the amplifiers, the sub amplifier itself and finally some t-nuts. I'm hoping it will arrive before the weekend. It is shipped from Germany but if I remember correctly it's pretty fast anyways.

Delayed step-by-step construction guide

Unfortunately the step-by-step construction guide for the O2 amplifier will be delayed  a bit. I have been very busy this weekend and I doubt I'll have enough time during the coming week. We'll see, I might divide it up into several smaller pieces maybe...

Making progress!

I'm making steady progress. Today was a perfect day for working outside. -5c and sunny, so I only had to put on a jacket and some slippers and head outside.

I started by removing the old drivers and the glassfiberwool insulation I had used as damping material. Blow it all clean with compressed air to avoid getting in contact with glassfiberwool dust.

New vs old driver

Big difference in size and quality, and of course in weight!

Next step was to measure the old driver holes. They seemed to be 23cm diameter and I needed 28cm diameter for the LAB12. Funny enough the internal width of the cabinet is exactly 28cm too. It took me a while to get both holes done. I didn't want to make the holes too big but I didn't want it to go too slow either.  After about an hour both holes was done and I went indoors to warm my hands and feet. I mean, I had been outdoors for more than an hour wearing no gloves and only slippers on my feet.

While I was warming myself I decided to seal the rest of the inside. I couldn't find the silicone I had used before so I just used normal wood glue and smeared it on the insides like this.

White glue and grey/black silicone

When that was done I headed out again to cut pieces for bracing. I can't do any fancy bracing since I can't remove any of the sides. So I decided to do like this...

The bottom picture only shows one side done. I'll do the other side when the glue has dried for an hour or two. I'm also wondering if I should try to add a brace going from one side panel to the other, which in this picture would mean from top to bottom. I think it would be able to do that since the driver hole is so big. I'm also thinking of adding a triangular brace between bottom panel and baffle below the driver cutout, which is this picture would mean on the left wall to the baffle. Maybe I'll do the same in the opposite corner (back panel and top panel).

The subwoofers arrived today

So today the drivers arrived. I got a text message while at school that said that I could pick them up as soon as I wanted to. My parents aren't home so I needed somebody to give me a ride. Thankfully a friend offered some help.

When opening the package I realised they were a bit bigger than I had expected them to be, that's good. And they were also a lot heavier and sturdier than I had thought. The basket feels rock solid and like very high quality.

Size comparison vs my LG Nexus 4 with bumper case on

I will start on the cabinets tomorrow. The plan is to use the old hole, just make it a bit bigger. I did some measuring yesterday and the LAB12 should fit on the baffle. We'll see though.