Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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All DIY

Posted by pburant (A) on April 13, 2007 at 07:13:20

In Reply to: Yup...this is what I have been wrestling with...to decouple or couple... posted by AAG on April 13, 2007 at 06:15:15:

My roller bearings and platforms are all DIY.

The rollers were made from good quality stainless steel soup ladles (spherical section ones) cut down and set in a brass base via an epoxy/sand/brass shaving mix which provides a very non-resonant cup (the main purpose of the brass base is to assure the bottom of the bearing surface is the same height for all three cups in a set).

The platforms consist of, from top to bottom:

.25" oak ply
.5" MDF
1" PE foam (my memory is failing me as to whether it was closed or open cell - if you search for contrained-layer paltforms on here you'll find out which is the right type to use)
.5" MDF
.25" oak ply

The platforms are of course spiked to the floor. They are also not rectangular - since I was putting the speakers on three bearings, two in the front where the bulk of the weight is, and one in the rear, the platforms are trapezoidal shaped (nearly triangular).

This isn't the most effective platform design - if altering the speaker height weren't an issue, I would have used a layer of .25" birch ply between the oak and MDF both top and bottom, and also added 6061 T6 aluminum as the outermost layers.

I did not countersink the bearings into the platforms, but to assure they are well coupled to the platforms, I added three feet to each bearing base by countersinking and epoxying three 3/16" brass balls into them. In order for the bearings to be effective with the speakers, I needed to epoxy three small squares of polished stainless steel to the bottom of the speakers - I was able to do this without covering the speaker spike threads, in case I ever sell the speakers or decide to go back to spiking them to the floor.

This setup is not for everyone - floorstanders on rollers are VERY unstable and easy to knock over. I get away with it due to my living arrangement, specifically lack of pets and children.

One of the techniques that has worked well for me in addressing vibration is that wherever I'm not trying to achive isolation (such as between the roller bearings and the platforms), I try to achieve effective coupling. In my scheme, the rollers provide very effective horizontal isolation, but provide very effective, rigid coupling to the vertical isolation devices: the platforms.

-Pete

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