Homegrown speaker created with foam plate
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 24th 2007 7:49AM
posted Dec 24th 2007 7:49AM
We know what you're thinking, and trust us, we're right there with you. We've no idea how a speaker constructed from a foam plate could sound anything close to decent, but judging by the comments from folks that have made their own, it may actually be worth your while to do the same over your holiday break. Reportedly, all you'll need is a standard foam plate, a couple of paper strips, two business cards, some wire, a bit of glue / tape, a neodymium magnet and an audio plug; once you've gathered your materials, you can hit the read link for the how-to guide of putting together the relatively simple device. Of course, we aren't responsible for any strange looks you get should you choose to pimp your new sound system to members of your extended family.
woooot! A speaker MacGyver sytle. I'm gonna try it.
Note the 1994 laptop and cheap budget Winamp player! Old School!
"Cheap budget Winamp player"?
Winamp is better and faster than almost any other media player out there. I've been using it for years, not because I just like tradition, but because I've never found anything beter than it.
Foobar2000.
What about it? I've tried it, and I prefer Winamp by a large margin. You can't just name a program; you've gotta back it up.
Apparently the guy made a previous version using a plastic cup, and has made some wierd headphones which works with a crystal radio... what ever that might be :)
Crystal radio is basically an AM radio receiver powered by the signal it's picking up. It was incredibly useful back in the days before everyone had power, but you had a tiny earpiece through which to listen and it wasn't all that loud.
You forgot to mention the wire. Cant get the magnet moving without a coil
Hey, none of you can spot that THIS IS A FAKE?!?!?!
it not fake i made it but its not loud because i used the wrong type of wire heres a link to a youtube video of it
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LNR97k2gdJk
its real dumba$$
The speaker made by the Householdsucker is fake. This is a real one. It truly works.
Maybe you should try it by yourself before waisting our time with your comments.
No.
This looks cool through if I was not so lazy I would try and make this.
No, this is real. I've done it myself a few years ago. And I actually had an old laptop and I even used WinAmp. Really cool. Its not real loud, but it can be done. If you hook it up to an external amp you can get more noise. And it is pretty good sound.
This works
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wOXUBWl1T5U
This speaker does work, in my high school engineering class we had to do a similar project. I figured out that the best material for the cone is a manila folder cut a certain way. To make the coil, just wrap some copper wire into a cylinder with a magnet in the middle. The red and black wires attach to each end of the copper wire wrapped around the magnet. The speaker I made had fairly high sound quality, a good range of tone, and it was loud enough to be heard across a classroom. Try it, there's nothing like 6.1 papercraft surround!
It's a bit more complicated than I previously stated using the magnet. A "magnet cylinder" should run from about a quarter inch above the center of the cone (on the side that the sound comes out) to about an inch out of the back. Then the copper wire has to be wrapped around the magnet without being mounted to the cone to allow the cone to move (the diameter of the wire cylinder should be a slight amount larger than the diameter of the magnet cylinder so the cone will move freely). It's easiest to have some sort of case when making this speaker.
well in my physics class in high school i made a speaker out of some wire wrapped around a straw, and then used a magnet to push, i think a small paper plate. sound was terrible and you couldnt hear it worth a damn, but it did work. although we were getting audio through a radio from FM, so yea it sounded like crap.
anyway thats bomb that its nice and loud and gets a decent frequency response
Welcome to engineering 101: http://engr.smu.edu/ee/1382/Speaker%20Lab.doc
With a few changed components, you could make you're own microphone too, no?
I saw this in the latest issue of Make. Pretty nifty stuff. I want to try it when I get some time.
we used to make these as kids out of 7-11 Slurpee Lids. They sound like sh!! but they worked so everyone could hear the walkman.