ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hello everyone!
Today I am beginning a new project I have thought about and plotted and schemed and brainstormed for over a year now. In the past I have had a few speaker projects built from scratch and it is about that time to start (and finish!) another.
If you haven't noticed, my projects so far (BeoVox 2500, Altec A7) have a theme.. They are all clones of original speakers driven by my desire and appreciation of the technology and style. However! I cannot really afford any of these original speakers so I have to resort to my abilities to intelligently engineer a precise clone but I try to add improvements as I see fit.
'BeoVox 3' - a passive clone of the excellent BeoLab 3. I have never heard the original (much like my previous two projects) but I am a huge fan of the technology (ALT) and of course, that spectacular David Lewis design.
The reason I have decided to make this project a reality is because of two friends of mine who are in the market for a new sound system have asked me for help and would like something to sound excellent, look modern and stylish yet fit a modest budget. After a long discussion with them, I merged my half baked idea for building a BeoLab 3 clone with their need for a pair of sleek speakers. Motivation? Check. Plus, let's be honest, my apartment doesn't exactly need any more speakers.
In this project I am combining a few objectives - I would like to include a few innovations in this project to keep it from simply being just a 'copy cat' build thread. I always work very hard to make meaningful technical contributions..
So to get this project started I set out a little over a week ago looking for parts. I quickly snapped up this set of orphaned BeoLab 3 parts. Aluminum enclosure, 2 passive radiators and the woofer. Also in transit is a second woofer.
Yet to be acquired are another set of passive radiators, 2 tweeters and maybe one of the ALT devices. If you have any of these parts - please PM me, I need these extras!
We will see in the end if I am able to give up the finished product, I tend to get attached to these things
Beo4 'til I die!
First things first! Time to get these objects into the computer environment.
I'll use my trusty calipers and a set of fillet/radius gauges to capture the shape of these parts and build a detailed 3D CAD model.
NOTE: Since the BeoLab 3 is a current Bang & Olufsen product I will not be distributing any of my CAD models and will also remove the various branding elements (script 'BANG & OLUFSEN') since this is not an official product of B&O. This is a technical exercise - plain and simple.
cool project!
PK: cool project!
Thanks PK! It will be a while before I get any tangible 3D parts, but it will be a fun build.
Here is the result of my modeling efforts for the last few hours..
Not complete but off to a good start!
The 'customer' has requested royal blue for the color.
Spent a few more hours on the enclosure today, captured most of the tweeter area detail I need and the cable outlet.
Evan, you must have the blues- its not white
Great project.
valve1: Evan, you must have the blues- its not white Great project.
Who said I wouldn't make a set for myself?
Hello Evan!
Nice project you having there
I also made my own BeoVox 3 some years ago. I couse to make it out of wood.
Find some nice speaker drivers from Peerless. one 5 1/4" woofer and two 5 1/4" passive radiator.
The cabinets internal volume is around 4,5liters, so they are bigger then BL3.
They sound really good, no need for a subwoofer.
Good luck with your project
Regards//Marcus
Living room: BeoVision 4-50 ACM, Beosystem 3 MK3 with samsung SP-H710AE projector, BeoLab 7-1, BeoLab 6000x3pair, BeoSound 3200, AV & CD cabinett & Beo4.
Lounge: BeoSound 3, BeoVision 7-32 mk5 & Beo4
Kitchen: BeoLab 2000 & Beo4
Master bedroom: BeoVision Avant-32, DVD1, BeoSound Ouverture & Beo4
Guest room: BeoVision 4002, DVD1, BeoSound 2000 & Beo4
Here are some pictures of my project.
Will update it this summer (minhembio.com) i have made some changes with the finish and the crossover and i have shortened the foot
http://www.minhembio.com/Parasound/281264/
parasound: Hello Evan! Nice project you having there I also made my own BeoVox 3 some years ago. I couse to make it out of wood. Find some nice speaker drivers from Peerless. one 5 1/4" woofer and two 5 1/4" passive radiator. The cabinets internal volume is around 4,5liters, so they are bigger then BL3. They sound really good, no need for a subwoofer. Good luck with your project Regards//Marcus
Hi Marcus!
I remember your project very well - very impressive! I can't say it wasn't part of my inspiration
Originally, I looked at the Peerless units, but found these original, spare BL3 parts to be quite affordable.
Hopefully I can get some spare time soon to finish the 3D modelling. All I have left to do is the ALT, tweeter, woofer and radiator.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen!
After a long delay due to travel, work and many other distractions I have managed to make some exciting progress with this project!
A friend of mine became interested in this project and has motivated me to finish the set of speakers AND build them in an active configuration! Details on this to follow later.
First things first - time to start printing this enclosure. Goal here is to check fit with the drivers and other components as well as the general 'print-ability'.
The first task is to get the mesh file into our printing application, in this case it is the newly released Airwolf3D Apex software. This orientation may seem strange but was the result of many printing simulation (the final simulation is shown below).
After tuning the placement it is time to check the 'layers' in the simulation view:
The red area is our BeoVox 3 cabinet and the blue is support material generated by Apex. The support is there to provide a foundation for the part layers above it that may have a steep overhang that did not have anything below it. This blue material will be removed and thrown away after printing is complete. The orientation is intended to reduce the area the support interacts with any visible area on the outside surfaces of the speaker. The primary issue with support is that any supported area has a noticeably less refined surface finish. The orientation above is intended to keep most of the support inside the speaker so as not to disturb the outer surfaces.
Here is a quick section view of the part:
Generally, the shell of the 3 will be 3mm, solid plastic. Any wall greater than 3mm will have infill of 20% (shown in yellow).
Interesting project, and I'm enjoying reading about it. I'm impressed with your digging into things like this.
For a speaker as small as the BL3 I wonder how a passive version will work out. Such a small speaker that puts out so much bass for its size, due to the kinds of tricks you can play with onboard electronics. Depending on the approach, you can modify speaker Qts and Fs to force it to behave like a different driver, which is useful for achieving low Fc in a small cabinet. If the driver is robust enough to handle the extra power needed. Plus, since it's a passive radiator it has the same issues as vented systems, in that the driver "unloads" at frequencies below the tuning frequency of the radiators or port. In an active system you can implement a steep low filter to keep the driver from being overdriven.
On the other hand, you will have more cabinet volume to play with, as there are no electronics inside, as long as you either choose small passive crossover components or even put the crossover outside the cabinet. In the "real" BL3 after they stuffed in all the electronics it's an amazingly small left over volume.
Good luck with it, and will be following your progress with interest!
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Glad you like the project Jeff!
Thankfully I have convinced the sponsor of this project to move forward in an active route to mitigate some of these issues with small enclosure volume. I agree with you - it will be an engineering challenge for sure. I am trying to get these done rapidly so I can move on to some other work and hopefully an active solution will enable me.
Maybe in the future I will investigate a passive filter. For more of these to be made.
At any rate, after 56 continuous printing hours and ~670g of plastic consumed, I have some progress to share! Here is the first print in all of its supported greatness. I couldn't wait to drop in a driver to test the fit so I grabbed a radiator and it dropped right in!
First things first - needed to get the support off and out of the cabinet. After hours and hours of grinding and plier-ing this was the haul of support used to build the Lab 3 cab. Absolutely crazy.
Now time to reveal the ugly area... The supported area on the back of the cab and in the connector area.
Since this print was effectively a test, the attrition on chiseling and grinding the final, well-bonded layers of support material off were halted. The project sponsor prefers the layered appearance of the print and doesn't want to sand/polish/paint them. So this means I need to investigate an alternative support material strategy.
I need to make some shape changes, I found some shoulders to be incorrectly modeled in the tweeter area and I need to add various hole features etc. Even with all of the support mess and a few minor areas of delamination, the result is quite impressive!
hi
interesting post ..any news ?
I have spare body 2x for Beolab 3.
anyone have any used spare parts to sell ?
Unfortunately I do not have any updates. With a big move to another part of the world and significant downsizing I had to stop working on this. At least for now.
If you follow ebay closely you can find parts quite frequently. And if you can't wait, the parts are actually not extremely expensive from B&O. The only thing I didn't get around to was modeling the ALT - otherwise I could have printed some for you!
Hi
Thanks for answer.
My plan is to find someone who could print 3D tweeter part ( sound lens )
The speakers will be passive. But I have to find passive bass drivers + 2 woofers.
Tweeter from beolab 6000 or 4000 is just correct size for the job :)
passive radiators
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/GHXAMP-For-4-INC-5-INCH-Subwoofer-Speaker-Bass-Radiator-113MM-Low-Frequency-Passive-Radiator-Speaker/32828224278.html