My BoomBox

Hello everyone

Have you ever encountered a situation where you went with friends to the beach at night  or maybe some  friend's apartment and he had no  stereo system?

It happened to me, and it sucks! 

So , i decided to build one !    

although it weights 6.5 Kilo , You Grab it with both your  hands , put the music at Max and have the best time !


Enjoy!

Materials :

1X1 meter of Plexiglas , preferable Transparent
screws & nuts - a lot!
12V 7 amp Batteries , preferred 2 for longer operation
Lepai Amp from eBay
12V Charger for the Battery -eBay
Speakers - i got the Pioneer 4.5" as Woofer / Mid-range  and a pair of Teac t20 Tweeters 
Volt-meter - ( not shown yet , but will be attached later )
Wiring for speakers
Iphone Dock
Aluminum Angles - comes in 3 Meter length - - for connecting the Plexiglas sides to each other

Tools :

Driller and electric screwdriver
Jigsaw - most important instrument - make sure you cut the Plexiglas with a refined saw (designated for steel)
Marker
Leveler
Calipers
A pair of clamps
Drill bits -  different sizes
Caliber
Tin snips + a pair of working gloves so you wont cut yourself 
Soldering iron - for the wiring
tin
Hot Glue

Time ,Patience , and lots and lots of Coffee !!

Start by planning the general size of your future to be Boombox.


Measure the inner diameter of your speakers , and accordingly mark it with the Caliber or some other ruler on the Plexiglas

Prepare the driller and and the jigsaw ,and off we go our way



 

cut the aluminum with Tin snips .

* please be cautious 

Make sure you grab the Aluminum angles to some tight ground , only then Drill !

Use a special drill bit for metal, that way  the hole will be accurate and round , and  probably will take less time to drill.

after i finished the drilling , i took the Aluminum angles and attached them to the Plexiglas  with bolts and nuts




 

Continue  sawing slowly , be careful not to brake the Plexiglas ,it`s a very delicate material and it might crack easily .

since i plan to put two 12V batteries at the bottom , and they are heavy .we need to create a strong durable Plexiglas bottom.

I took two Plexiglas pieces , attached them to each other , drilled holes for the stand , and attached them to the sides with the Aluminum profiles

On top of the upper case i plan to put the Lepai amp and some Docking station for the iPhone

I just put inside the Batteries in order to see if they sit properly 

before you take the Nylon off , it would be wise ( not like i did )  to finish with the Drilling . god forbids i`ll scratch it ;)

I pealed off the protecting nylon layer of the Plexiglas .

I had to unscrew all the bolts and nuts in order to get rid of the excess layers of nylon.

Without the Nylon

all i need is to wire the speakers and tweeters do some  good soldering

This thing sticks like charm!

At some point i decided to replace to old tweeters with a set of Teac T20 .

It was quite tricky the issue of releasing the grip of the Hot Glue from the Tweeters and the Plexiglas.

after Gooooogling for a while i found  a quick Cool way to remove the Glue

Alcohol ! 

 You just put  tiny tiny tiny little drop on the Glue and in seconds it releases it`s grip , like taking candy from a baby :)

Make sure that you did some good Soldering in here, we don`t want it to disconnect and perhaps make us some Short circuit .

I connected the batteries in Parallel in order to give me higher Amps . Total of 14 Amps
Still i will have 12 Volt direct and stable current

After charging it for a few hours  ,the batteries gave me a reading of 13.2  Watts and 14 Amps

After 8 hours of playing the Boombox  i checked the Voltage with the Volt-Meter and the reading was 12.89 !!

 Amazing!