Speaker Enclosure

Finally got my hands on a 3D printer, and I’m so excited.

After researching how speakers work, I wanted to experiment with different enclosure geometries to see how they might affect sound quality.

Gyroid structures caught my attention because of their continuous, interconnected three-dimensional geometry. I decided to experiment with three enclosure designs:

• Solid walls: A conventional enclosure with completely solid walls.
• Gyroid wall structure: Solid outer surfaces with gyroid infill between the wall layers.
• Gyroid infill: An enclosure with gyroid infill throughout its walls, without solid wall layers.

After printing and testing all three, I noticed some interesting differences. The enclosure with gyroid infill throughout produced a particularly sharp sound, while the solid-wall enclosure sounded less sharp. Interestingly, the enclosure with gyroid structures sandwiched between solid wall layers produced the smoothest sound of the three.

I'm not entirely sure how scientific my experiment was, or whether the gyroid structures themselves were responsible for the differences. There were probably plenty of uncontrolled variables involved. Nevertheless, I now have a working speaker enclosure, and the sound quality has improved significantly compared to the bare speaker driver.

Not bad for my first 3D-printed speaker!