Phi, the flagship name of my speaker concepts, took on a new form. With expansion into CNC machining capabilities, I was able to design true form that brings function.
Spherically-capped cones, such as a traditional ice cream cone, offer the most productive enclosure for audio quality. The varying radius minimizes standing waves and extends internal sound diffraction, while the slimming geometry mitigates the amplitude. In combination, the curved shape prevents edge amplification of sound from enclosure resonance.
This is biomimicry at its finest; inspired by the Nautilus and Fibonacci.
In another concept, the subwoofer was mounted in a spherical enclosure as a fourth-order bandpass. This not only enabled spacious lows, but co-linear ports and a balanced centre-of-mass.
A solid magnet was placed within the enclosure and a 250W electromagnet in the main body. The entire enclosure was to be levitated, free from body resonance and mechanical audio transmission through floors or walls; this would produce the cleanest bass theoretically possible.
The aluminum frames were waterjet from 1/2″ 6061 with the electromagnets mounted within a 3D Printed housing. This project reached the limits of my time, and technical experience, from physical levitation.
Not only was I studying for finals, but the precision required for stability was impossible to meet with the electromagnets and related components within my budget. Because of the choice of a permanent magnet in the enclosure, and an iron-core electromagnet, if the system was over-damped, the magnet would become fixed onto the iron-core.
A far more powerful electromagnet, combined with a ferro-magnetic material in the enclosure, or an air-core electromagnet (even more powerful), was required.
Raven Caron 
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