Final Project Update 3 (It's Alive!!!)

Over the course of the past 3 days I've been making some serious headway on my DIY condenser mic project. last update you saw a video of me using the bread boarded prototype, and since then I've been putting my time into condensing that messy circuit into a manageable, presentable circuit board. So, while I won't be demoing the circuit again, I thought I would take a moment to show you all how I actually made it.

1. I sketched the pattern for my leads onto a plate that consists of copper outer layers and a center layer of some kind of composite material.

2. Using a Sharpie brand paint marker, I traced over my pencil lead sketch

3. I then floated the entire board in this agitator filled with ferric chloride, which ate the copper except for in the areas I had coated in paint marker. The result was a near-complete board ready for drilling.

4. I used this drill to drill holes for different components to be soldered onto the leads of the board, then I dipped the board in an instant tinning solution which "tins" the copper leads and protects them for long-term use.

5. After that, I simply soldered all of the components that were used in the original bread-board prototype onto the newly formed circuit board and tested the mic again. And..............

The result speaks for itself. This fully functional mic circuit is now compact and ready to be mounted in the 3D printed casing.

Before:

After:

Final Project Update 2 (Houston, we have audio)

So today was an exciting day in home made Mic ville. I did a little bit of soldering and breadboarding (neither of which I actually knew anything about until today. Big ups to my professor, Brian Cera for helping me do it without blowing anything up) and after only blowing one condenser capsule because I forgot to plug in a resistor, we have audio! My next step is gonna be to etch some kind of makeshift circuit board for the mess of components in the video to rest neatly on, then I'll mount it to a 3D printed body and do a better demo video to show off my mic. So yeah. If nothing else, I can say I made a working mic. Now I just need to make it usable.

Final Project Update

After some considerable planning and a meeting with Bryan (who was a major help), I've decided to change the direction of my final project a bit. Rather than designing a ribbon mic, I'm now working on a piece of tech from the current era of recording: The condenser mic. Using a small sensor called a capsule, and passing the signal from said capsule through a circuit (I'd give more detail, but I'm honestly still trying to figure out exactly how said circuit works myself), the mic reproduces sound to varying degrees of accuracy depending on the quality of the components used and the design of the circuit. Using a circuit diagram I got from instructibles, autodesk inventor, some circuit components I ordered from digikey, and an energy drink can (yes, you read that right), I plan to move forward on my quest to build a DIY budget mic that is worthy of home studio use.

Example of a condenser mic:

Example of an exposed condenser mic capsule:

The inspiration for my mic body design (RockStar can inside of a conventional mic mount):

My first CAD prototype/mock-up of my mic body design:

9-Volt Battery Panel (WIP)

 Holes for XLR port to be mounted (WIP):

 Front face with bubble for vinyl logo (WIP)