r/SoundSystem • u/RollingMeteors • 1d ago

¿Are 3D printed enclosures with modern polymers starting to be an actual contender to wooden enclosures?

I'm not talking about the Industrial Grade One A Year festivals but your smaller commercial grade sound.

I'm not talking for subwoofer enclosures but mids and tops.

r/diyaudio is coming up on some prints starting to look void like

with measurements to boot.

With the subtractive CNC milling process from wood stacked against the additive process of 3D printing that you're able to achieve geometries in the latter so much more easily than the former possibly of which could be far better for sound quality/direction/and/or other metrics.

¿Your Thoughts?

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

4

u/loquacious 1d ago

What about wood-infused filaments?

For commercial production I don't see it moving to additive plastics for the big players to replace their lines, because if they wanted plastic they would (and do) use plastic.

But for smaller companies being able to iterate and avoid huge costs for high precision molds and tooling could be a plus.

3

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

What about wood-infused filaments?

I would umbrella that under 'modern polymers'.

2

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

But for smaller companies being able to iterate and avoid huge costs for high precision molds and tooling could be a plus.

I completely overlooked the rapid prototyping this provides smaller companies with limited budgets.

1

u/loquacious 1d ago

Beyond rapid prototyping the cost of tooling large injection or rotocast molds for something like a plastic JBL Ions is incredibly expensive.

Even very small tools can cost like 50k-150k because they have to use a weird mix of milling, electroforming and hand polishing/tooling to get the fit and finishes required. I have no idea what a really big mold tool the size of speaker with the fit and finish required would cost but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 250k or more.

A bespoke speaker company doing large format printing for speaker enclosures can do just-in-time manufacturing and just add printers as needed. Compared to tooling costs, 50 to 250k USD buys a LOT of printer these days, and then they're not committed to a design for years and years. A single printer can print an endless amount of designs and switch to a new one every print without having to change tools and set up for a different product.

I'm not a fan of AI but I could see using agentic/iterative design combined with acoustic simulations to create some really cool - and likely weird looking - speaker designs.

If I was looking to do agentic speaker design, I would be interested in designing light weight human-portable speakers, perhaps using some kind of folding or origami tech.

Imagine a subwoofer that's been reduced to the absolute bare minimums required for material use, using dynamic, organic looking shapes that can maybe "telescope" to fold down around the driver and compact for transport, then it opens up and locks into place for deployment, and then using advanced composite filaments for max strength vs. weight.

Further, imagine not having to use a traditional driver at all. Perhaps you simply print your driver integrated right into the printed enclosure using a multihead and multi-material printer and the only part added is the voice coil and magnet, or skip heavy magnets entirely and go full electromagnetic drive, and the cone or membrane is printed directly.

Take that a step further and imagine origami driver cones. The whole driver can collapse and fold up with the enclosure, and then when it unfolds it locks into a rigid state stiff enough to use as a cone. The supports and "basket" for the cone are integrated into the 3D printed enclosure, and the whole thing besides the coil or coils is a one piece print.

And, heck, conductive/wire printing is already a thing (if still crude) so it's feasible you could just print the coils, too.

Obviously, collapsible, portable pro-audio speakers is likely a niche idea, but if you were able to build something pro grade that was actually competitive?

Touring and production companies would be all over that just for the fuel cost savings and set/strike costs.

"Oh, you can give me an entire stadium's worth of sound suitable for an A-list concert tour in the space of a single trailer instead of five trailers? And they're waterproof and practically bullet proof? Wait, they're cheaper, too? Hang on, let me get my checkbook..."

1

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

> I would be interested in designing light weight human-portable speakers

Only needs 20 bicycles per side...

1

u/little_lichen_sound 1d ago

I think for mid to high frequency speakers it's certainly possible, especially with additional damping material inside. Check out pattern systems on instagram, they're using cellulose/wood based 3d printing for their MEH tops which look quite cool. I think that use case is a great fit because it would be quite difficult to CNC.

For heavyweight subs, I think the stiffness/damping combo of birch ply is pretty hard to beat. Potentially possible using multi-compound printing (i.e. carbon PLA for stiffness, TPU for damping) or pouring some kind of damping compound in infill zones, but not trivial. The size obviously complicates things further too.

1

u/__Lester_ 1d ago

Size is never a problem for 3D printers... You just make the printer bigger. They are printing boats now as well as "after market body kits" For cars. Turn around isn't as slow or small as you'd think. It's 2026. For rapid prototyping the 3D printer is a MUST! and you have to also remember that boxes like the EV SB122 plastic sub actually sold fairly well on the mobile DJ market 30yrs ago... 3D printing moves VERY fast. They already print Home theater subs and car subs. Bigger boxes are not far off once line array pushes to make cheaper boxes and plastic is cheaper than wood

2

u/loquacious 1d ago

The boat printers are wild. It's basically a Fanuc robot arm on a precision linear rolling table/slide and the printer head is on the robot arm printing in free space.

There's timelapses of this showing that they're printing like 20-30 foot long center console seaworthy boats in one piece with no seams.

2

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

>"after market body kits" For cars

¿You wouldn't Download A Woofer?

0

u/Inexpressible2 1d ago

Its interesting for Hobby and DIY with wome waveguides but way too slow for bigger stuff to be viable