Hello everyone. Between a busy summer schedule with the family, and working extra shifts at my job I haven’t had as much time as I hoped over the past few months to experiment with my M4. I did manage to complete a little project that I’ve been very excited about: building a pair of speakers.
These are the VBS 10.2 speakers from MTG designs. They have DIY plans available free on their website, and lots of discussion about the speakers on the AVS forums. They are two-way speakers with a 10-inch woofer, and 1-inch high frequency compression driver coupled to horn waveguide. They were originally designed primarily for use as home theater speakers, but I have modified them to use as mini-PA speakers for backyard parties, BBQ’s, and for listening to music in my workshop. I pair them with a THAM12 subwoofer which was my first speaker building project (before I had the Maslow). This is only my second speaker project, but I am an experienced wood worker and electronics tinkerer, and have a modest collection of tools in my shop. I am thrilled with the finished speakers, they look and sound great! Already working on plans for my next speaker build, and I’ll post details of that project in the next few months when I get it rolling.
Speaker building is one of two hobbies that I am most excited to use my Maslow 4. Although I am very happy with this project, it was not without a significant amount of frustration. The most difficult part of using the M4 for me has been the repeated cycles of extend/retract when trying to get the machine up and running. I don’t want to make this topic about setup or configuration, so I’ll post about those issues in other threads, but once the machine is up and running I’ve had good results.
As I mentioned above, detailed plans for this project are freely available on the MTG Designs site, including STL files for the woofer and horn cutouts. There are no other CNC files included in the plans, so I created a model in Onshape (which I have been learning over the past few months). I modified the original plans a little by creating rabbets on inside of the front, back and side panels so I could assemble the boxes easier and use only glue and brad nails to fasten them together.
I originally planned on cutting all the panels and rabbets using the Maslow, but I struggled to achieve the straight-line accuracy in the cuts needed to make a tight fitting box without excessive sanding. Also, it was just faster and easier for me to make the straight-line cuts using my table saw. In the end, I usesd the M4 to cut out the holes on the front panels for the woofer and horn, and used my table saw to cut the rest of the panels and rabbets (with dado stack).
Overall I’m happy with the performance of the M4. Once I can get the configuration and setup dialed in and escape the purgatory of repeated extend/retract cycles, I feel confident that this machine will be up to the task to cut the panels for future speakers (and hopefully boats!)