This project is to make planar speakers by plotting fine magnet wire on a membrane, instead of the usual voice-coil and cone construction. The resulting speakers will be low profile, low mass, and (hopefully) high performance. It's my hope that by reducing the relevant design degrees of freedom (the path of the coils, the arrangement of permanent magnets) we can design the geometry and actuation of sound systems as a whole, rather than as assemblages of individually optimized components.
I did some more prototyping on this design, using milled 1/16" cotton-phenolic, instead of laser-cut 1/8" plywood. I also cured the membrane onto a thin sheet of carbon with a 0,+60,-60 layup. I also switched to 1/8" (D) x 1/16" (H) magnets, instead of 1/8" (D) x 1/8" (H), because the simulations predicted the force output would be similar.