[Planot]

Question - what are the design challenges and limitations you have encountered so far.

One of the main challenges was money. I call my self financially responsibile. From what I can glean from my reading and viewing Shark Tank, so far I have spent a small fraction of what others have spent for, prototyping. The downside is that it takes me much longer to move from point A to point B. ( For some bizarre reason many people criticize me for taking so long. )

Since I am not a mechanical or electrical engineer I have had to learn a lot of new skills. Consequently my early prototypes were crude and I would not call them works of art. Being an artist and having grown up working in my patent's bicycle shop I had developed good manual skills. Those skills did not fully preparing me for this challenge but the one skill that was most valuable was and is patience.

Patience with the machine shops I had to rely on was a trial. I understand the economics of their business and the difficulty of doing "onesies and twosies."

But unfortunately some are real jerks. Some are understanding and patient and some won't even discuss doing business with you. Fortunately there is one small shop not far from me and the owner is fair and reasonable.

One of the issues was that I was not having everything machined all at once. Now that I have everything "worked out" and I have blueprints for everything then I can just get everything made at once. You have to realize that there is what they call "setup time." The time required to get all of the machine tools ready to do a task, the time to look over the blueprints and finalize the plan for executing, and then cleanup and billing. When you have four or eight built at once, as opposed to one or two, then the cost per unit falls dramatically.

One other difficulty is doing something differently than has been done before. You don't have many reference resources for how to proceed. So, I have to look at many diverse disciplines to piece together a "road map."
Fortunately we all have that great ocean of information at our fingertips.

John

[Planot]

John,

Thank you for the answer to my question, but no need to be defensive with your response.
I'm intrigued by your new/different approach to transducer design...not combative.

Be well,

Chris   

Chris, I am sorry! I did not intend to sound combative!

I was just trying to make the point that there are two issues; electrical efficiency and acoustic efficiency. (Then there is the interplay between the two.) They are the same with all speaker technologies. (There are differences with the effect of enclosures on two dimension diaphragms.) I think it could be stated as torque verses force for the difference in motor types but surface area is directly proportional between two dimensional diaphragms and three dimensional diaphragm. That's my guess based on my limited experiments. There is definitely a need for more research in this area. The phase behavior of the three dimensional diaphragm is an area that demands research in the future, since it is that principal or property that allows the Planot to function at all. When there is a single instance, where a principal breaks down then there is powerful new science lurking in that anomaly. I hope I am making sense.

John

[bladesmith]

I would think that you would have issues with "shear" strength in the long shaft. If played loud or under stress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_strength

And I only mean that in the metallurgy sense of terms. Metal fatigue might be an issue after long periods of time.

Have you tried any different alloys with the shaft material ?

I know many machine/CNC shops don't know much about alloy/tool steels, because they most often use "hot rolled" steel, which is/are soft. There understanding of metallurgy is limited, in most cases.

Good luck,
V....

[FullRangeMan]

John,
Your speaker are dipole as regular cone drivers?
Bipolar or elsemore?

[Planot]

John,
Your speaker are dipole as regular cone drivers?
Bipolar or elsemore?

Th Planot driver is an omnidirectional radiator.

John

[Planot]

I would think that you would have issues with "shear" strength in the long shaft. If played loud or under stress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_strength

And I only mean that in the metallurgy sense of terms. Metal fatigue might be an issue after long periods of time.

Have you tried any different alloys with the shaft material ?

I know many machine/CNC shops don't know much about alloy/tool steels, because they most often use "hot rolled" steel, which is/are soft. There understanding of metallurgy is limited, in most cases.

Good luck,
V....

These are trade secrets.

John

[FullRangeMan]

Th Planot driver is an omnidirectional radiator.

John

So acoustic SPL will be low as all omnis or there is a way to increase it?

[Folsom]

So acoustic SPL will be low as all omnis or there is a way to increase it?

I'd think the farther it can rotate, and hence the size, the more SPL.

Rotation distance would be like Xmax, and to increase it you'd be forced to enlarge the driver so the distance traveled increases at the outside, but without making it go crazy like an owl head. This would take more and more dampening from the amp, I presume.

[Wind Chaser]

I'd think the farther it can rotate, and hence the size, the more SPL.

Rotation distance would be like Xmax, and to increase it you'd be forced to enlarge the driver so the distance traveled increases at the outside...

I think you're right.

It would sure be cool to see these in action.

John, how loud have you played these?

[Russell Dawkins]

So acoustic SPL will be low as all omnis or there is a way to increase it?

Where do you get the idea that omnis are inherently low in SPL capability or even sensitivity, if that was what you are referring to?

[Folsom]

Russell, I bet since many are not aimed at your head, they are a little bit quieter or have some features that would make one think it. But that doesn't include things like MBL.

[Planot]

I have to get back to work now. (I'll try to answer any more questions when I can.)
Thanks to everyone at Audio Circle.
This is great forum and everyone has great decorum.
Check my Web site for more information concerning the Live Feed on Twitter (with Frank Van Alstine) and please go to the Tech Briefs Create the Future Web site and click on my entry, to keep my views counter growing.
Please use the vote feature and vote for the Planot if you like it.

*Please follow the link below to vote for my submission to the Create the Future Design Contest.

Please vote for my entry. Also share this post!
Thanks and Promote the Planot.
 
http://contest.techbriefs.com/2015/entries/consumer-products/5851-planot-boxless-full-range-omnidirectional-speaker
 

[FullRangeMan]

John,
As many here I would like to vote, but to so it is necessary to register and logon.
Do you would have a direct link to the vote page?

[FullRangeMan]

Where do you get the idea that omnis are inherently low in SPL capability or even sensitivity, if that was what you are referring to?

My omnis knowledge is limited, I think omnis are low sensitivity as dipoles, not SPL capability.
Do you would mention some hi sensitivity omnis?

[Planot]

John,
As many here I would like to vote, but to so it is necessary to register and logon.
Do you would have a direct link to the vote page?

Sorry, no. The registration is necessary so that there is no cheating. Their privacy statement says they will not use the info for anything but vote verification. Complete privacy; I will not know who votes. No SPAM, etc. They do check e-mails for false addresses.

John

[Planot]

My omnis knowledge is limited, I think omnis are low sensitivity as dipoles, not SPL capability.
Do you would mention some hi sensitivity omnis?

I can think of two other true omni's;
the German Physiks (BORDERLAND MK IV) and the MBL (Radialstrahler 101E).
They both require a lot of power, my guess, because of the nature of the mass and stiffness of their designs and not because they are omnidirectional.

(Please list any other true omnidirectional speakers/drivers you can think of. Don't include speakers that use reflectors or diffusers to smoosh the sound.)

John

[DaveC113]

I can think of two other true omni's;
the German Physiks (BORDERLAND MK IV) and the MBL (Radialstrahler 101E).
They both require a lot of power, my guess, because of the nature of the mass and stiffness of their designs and not because they are omnidirectional.

(Please list any other true omnidirectional speakers/drivers you can think of. Don't include speakers that use reflectors or diffusers to smoosh the sound.)

John

And Ohm...

http://ohmspeaker.com/

On the material for the shaft I'd think composites would be an obvious choice, you can make them in many different ways to suit the application best and the stiffness to weight ratio will be better than any other material I can think of right now...

[Wind Chaser]

John, I saw this little teaser... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeGtdKoxk20

I don't see any movement and from what I can gather, they are generating a fair bit of volume in that brief demo. This is truly exciting! You've obviously come up with something very original that is truly unique. Well done sir! I can hardly wait to see these developed into a commercial product. 

Having said that, I would not demo them without some bass augmentation. It's pretty hard to judge satellites without some bottom end.

[Planot]

John, I saw this little teaser... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeGtdKoxk20

I don't see any movement and from what I can gather, they are generating a fair bit of volume in that brief demo. This is truly exciting! You've obviously come up with something very original that is truly unique. Well done sir! I can hardly wait to see these developed into a commercial product. 

Having said that, I would not demo them without some bass augmentation. It's pretty hard to judge satellites without some bottom end.

Those were not made by me but an acquaintance. (A particle physics who does work at the LHC.) I am not sure what Bunn used to record the demo but I think the lack of low end is due to two things; inadequet dampening of the moving system and the recording equipment. Actually I recommend using a highpass filter to remove subsonic noise. I would recommend rolling off the low end at maybe, 30 Hz. There is not much music there to worry about and anyway you're just taxing the system. Two more Planots could be constructed and an electronic crossover could send just the bass to them.

(Try using a spectrum anylizer at a live un-amplified classical concert and see what low end you can see/hear; noise excluded.)

John

[DaveC113]

Have you seen the rotary subwoofer?

http://www.eminent-tech.com/RWbrochure.htm

I wonder if you can somehow use a planot driver in the same way as the rotary driver and make a Planot subwoofer?