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| Top Hat Speaker Build |
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| ibuildstuff4u:
My 16 year old nephew drew up some prints for some desk top speakers and asked me to make some parts for them. The speakers are full range and the "Top Hat" will disperse the sound in a 360* area. The body of the speakers is made out of PVC plumbing pipe and the rest is aluminum and wood. The pipe will be painted when done and the aluminum parts will be polished to a shine. My challenge this week is to make the "Top Hat" part. It starts off with a 5" diameter piece of aluminum that I rough cut in to two 3.5" pieces. Then it's off to the lathe to face off the pieces and turn them down to 4.750 in diameter and 3.250 in length. I had to use my 4 jaw 6" chuck as my 3 jaw was too small so it took a while to dial in each piece to the lathe. Dale P. |
| ibuildstuff4u:
After turning the parts I moved over to the mill and set up the rotary table. (This is one tool I don't use enough in the shop!) I set up the rotary table to drill three holes equally spaced apart in the two parts which will be used to mount them to a face plate. These holes also match up with three of the six holes in the speakers and will be used to hold up the top hat in the future. It was a pain to get the parts dialed in to the rotary table, but after they were dialed in I drilled the three holes and tapped them for a 10-32 bolt which will hold them to the lathe face plate. Dale P. |
| ibuildstuff4u:
My CNC lathe doesn't have a face plate so I bought a 6" chuck adapter for the lathe and also mounted it to the rotary table and drilled the same three holes so I could bolt the parts to it in the future. So here is where I call it a night. I have both parts ready to turn on the lathe and the face plate is ready to mount to the lathe. Now here is the problem!!! I'm having trouble programing the CNC lathe! I don't have any background with CAD so I have to relay on the Mach 3 wizards along with writing G codes. I can set up the lathe to cut the taper and radius, but they don't blend together very nicely when I perform test cuts. Hopefully I can have it all sorted out soon as I want to cut these blanks and see how they look! Dale P. |
| ibuildstuff4u:
For anyone that can help with the G code, I'm ok with changing the Top Hat part a little from what is pictured. I just as long as the taper is around 2.5" long and is around 2.75 inches in diameter in the end. One nice smooth transition would be fine as the shape can be a little different than what is shown in the picture. Just let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for the help! Dale P. |
| AdeV:
Nice work sir! Interesting speaker design too... I might be tempted to try one of those myself... Anyway, I'm wondering if the blend problems you're having are actually in the drawing rather than the lathe; it looks to me like the radius cut is too deep, so the "exit" of the radius isn't at a tangent to the tapered section. When it cuts, is it leaving a sharp corner on what looks like a bit of a bump? As you'd included a dimensioned drawing, I took the liberty of copying it but using the tangent arc feature, which suggests a radius of 1.239" instead of 0.881" - does that help? |
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