Week 5 – making the final prototype 1

After the adjustments made in week 4, it was time to print the final shell for our speaker.

Both parts were printet at the same time, this time with a lot of support structure, which turned out to cause a bit of frustration since it was very hard to remove.
We used knifes and tongs to successfully get of all the unwanted supportstructures. Even though we tried to be very careful, the removal of the material caused some damage to the surface of the speaker.

We concluded that it might have been easier to print the speaker with less support structure, or maybe print from an angle where the support structure had been inside the shell, so it wouldn’t have caused  visible damage.

After we cleansed the surface from loose material, it was time to glue the parts together. The trapezes we made to connect the two shell-parts, didn’t match 100%, so we had to grind the edges a bit – after that it was a perfect fit.

We used second-glue (for plastic), and it was quickly assembled.

To make a smooth surface we used spatula. We gave it two layers and polished it after each one.

A new problem came up, as we figured the hole for the power-supply wasn’t nearly big enough. This was clearly something we should have thought of while we drawing the 3D CAD model, but luckily it could be made bigger pretty easily using a drill, if you ignore the fact that our nerves were totally on edge close to deadline. We recommend checking out the size of your power plug before 3D printing.

The wooden handle were cut out and sanded until it fit in the speaker shell.

While polishing the speaker and handle, we had a side-quest to choose the colour for the speaker. Many possibilities were discussed, and the group was torn with multiple opinions. After a visit in a graffiti-shop, the choice fell on navy-blue and light-grey.
Before coloring the surface, we used primer for a better result. This also helped giving a more matte surface.

Now we just needed the laser-cut parts (see making the final prototype 2) and the assembly of the whole speaker (coming soon).