Planar Speaker Asylum

RE: Parts Express announces full line of NEO drivers

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Parts Express announces full line of NEO drivers posted by Roger Gustavsson on October 11, 2020 at 01:00:12

Roger, your post lead me to my owners manual, which has a lot of technical details on the design of the LFT-8b. Somewhere awhile back I had read that the conductive material was vapor deposited onto the Mylar of the LFT driver, but you are absolutely correct: whomever wrote that was mistaken (and therefore so was I), because here is what is written in the manual:
"The construction of the LFT-8b begins by laminating a very thin sheet of aluminum foil to a half-mil-thick sheet of Mylar. A voice grid pattern, created by means of CAD (Computer-Aided-Design) technology, is silk-screened onto the foil side, the remainder of the aluminum---the part not covered by the ink from the silk-screening---is etched away, in a manner similar to the etching of traces on a printed circuit board. The ink is then washed away, leaving a voice grid of near-perfect uniformity. This technique results in a diaphragm/voice coil grid that is still less than one mil in total thickness, and also permits relatively narrow spaces between the individual traces, so the diaphragm can be evenly driven over its entire surface."
Phew! The next paragraph in the manual goes on to describe the design and construction of the magnetic structure of the driver. I am very impressed by the design and build of the LFT driver, quite a bit more sophisticated imo than the m-p drivers in Maggies.
At any rate, the point is the LFT driver has proven itself to be free of the lamination problems older Maggies develop. One may buy an older used (or new) LFT-8b without fear of the repairs many older Maggies require.

Edits: 10/11/20 10/11/20

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