Smartphone Speaker

In this instructable I'll explain how I've made a speaker for my smartphone. I've made this speaker in the Fablab of Hogeschool Rotterdam.

To start making my Smartphone Speaker I first made a couple of sketches of how I saw the speaker in my head. I'm planning on making a wooden case for the speaker which I will make using a laser cutter, the back plate of the case will have a hinge so you can open it and put your phone in it.

Using these sketches I've made paper prototype to visualize what I'll be making. I first drew a blueprint on paper and cut it out with a stencil knife. Then I folded the blueprint into a box, the sides/front/top/bottom are taped together and the back is only attached to the bottom because this is the part that can be opened. With a piece of duct tape I have shown where the hinge will be placed. On the front I've drawn a black circle, this is where the speaker will be placed.

Since I was happy with my paper prototype I started working on my 2D drawing. I went to www.makercase.com to design my case, I designed my case with and without fingers so I could combine them. The reason I did this is that the back should not be stuck to the rest of the case, since this is the part that has to be able to be opened. To find out which sides needed fingers I drew a box and started marking the lines where the sides would be attached to each other, I did this with pink. With a blue marker I marked the lines that shouldn't have fingers. Now I knew where the fingers on my case plans should be. I opened my case plans in Adobe Illustrator so I could adjust them. With the pen tool I deleted some anchor points so the fingers would disappear. At last I added a circle to the front panel which will need to be cut out, this is where the speaker will be placed.

The inside dimensions of the case are:
- height: 160 mm
- width: 85 mm
- depth: 25 mm
The diameter of the circle is 70 mm.

Since I was happy with the drawing of my case I decided to head over to the laser cutter. I've used two pieces of leftover triplex which were big enough for the parts of my case. In Illustrator I copied the back and front of my case to a new file and cut this out of one of the pieces of leftover material. I then copied the sides, top and bottom to another file and cut these out of the other piece of leftover material.

When I was done with cutting my case I started to assemble it. First I checked if everything fitted together. Since I have no knowledge of programming a speaker myself and did not have enough time to learn how to do this, I decided to use a small, old speaker which I had lying around.

I started with glueing the speaker to the front panel of the case. I used a bit of superglue around the edges. I then glued the top, bottom and sides to the front panel with wood glue.

At this point I have not yet attached the back panel to the case, since I'm going to do this with a hinge, so it can be opened.

The hinge I'm using to attach the back panel to the case was made using a 3D printer. This was the first time I was drawing something for a 3D printer, so I followed the starting tutorials at tinkercad.com. After these tutorials I search for hinges other people had already drawn and found a lot of them. I decided to simply pick one and adjust the dimensions so it would suit my case. I ended up with a hinge that is approximately 16 mm by 44 mm. From tinkercad.com I downloaded the .stl file and printed the hinge (together with a smaller one for someone else) on a 3D printer.

OH NOOOO! My hinge doesn't fit together! Well, time to be creative and make this hinge work, I like it to much to throw away and use a ready made hinge.

I have tried a lot of things to make the hinge work, a toothpick, a paperclip, using it on the inside of the case and on the outside of the case. Nothing seemed to work, but then I thought of using a rubber band since this would connect the two parts of the hinge, but there would also be enough room for movement.

I put a rubber band through the holes of the hinge and since a rubber band won't stay in place on it's own a placed a bead on both ends. I glued the hinge to the case using a hot glue gun. Now my case can be opened and closed!

After assembling my case, I found out that my phone is too big to fit inside. To fix this problem I drilled a little hole on the bottom of the back panel, just big enough for the cord of the speaker to go through. Now my phone can be placed next to the case when using the speaker.

I had a circular piece of wood leftover which I coloured black and glued to the front panel beneath the speaker. Now the speaker looks like a speaker box.