11th Aug 2025
Pioneering, audio equipment manufacturer.
Customer Overview
We were contacted by one of our existing customers who are a pioneering British manufacturer of the world’s finest audio equipment. They wanted to redesign their speaker frame to incorporate many of the advances in audio technology at the same time as making it more accepting of the future’s emerging technologies. The scope was to create tooling at a competitive price point, improve efficiency by increasing cycle times, reduce tooling wear and value-added processes but not compromise on aesthetics or performance that their customers valued.
Design Brief
The design of the speaker basket is a compromise of form and function which is further influenced by the constraints of the casting process. The design had to be visually appealing but above all, sound fantastic. Being acutely aware that their customers demanded the ultimate in auditory performance at the same time as being more akin to being a piece of art than a functional device, we knew we didn’t have anywhere near the room for change that we were accustomed to.
Challenges
Design challenges are always such because of what our customer wants and what is physically possible in the diecasting process. Ideally, aluminium would be injected into a mould where the casting wall section would be at its thickest and travel to other parts of the cavity where the wall section is reduced. This allows pressure to be kept constant without any pressure drop-offs.
Speaker baskets by their very design nature have little material but cover a lot of surface area. Moving molten aluminium over bigger distances with minimal temperature drop is challenging. The use of die heating and cooling is paramount as is good gate design, this is where the molten aluminium is injected into the tool. Good gate design will reduce the prospect of defects through such things as cold flow and porosity.
Conclusion
By allowing us to change the design slightly, we were able to centre feed the casting which helped greatly with the flow of aluminium. This design lent itself to better flow of material as the injection point was at the thickest wall section of the casting, flowing to the thinnest. This also led to tooling size being minimised. Centre feeding molten aluminium means there is no need for extra tooling real estate below the casting, creating a long runner. The runner is a channel that feeds molten aluminium from the pouring barrel, up into the gate area of the casting. This saved investment to be used on better venting, overflow and cooling strategies to help minimise casting defects.
Through good DFM, the customer didn’t have to compromise on aesthetics, performance or future proof capabilities of their initial design. This allowed them to manufacture a stunning high-performance piece of audio equipment both in looks and performance.