In last week’s post I shared with you my designs for a stackable enclosure that allows you to build any height sound box for your DCC speaker.  You can find the post here.

This week the parts have arrived from Shapeways and I thought I would show you how they came out.  Right out of the box the parts are transparent and look like this.

The hollow parts are the wall sections and the closed off parts are the bases  As with all parts printed in the Shapeways Frosted Ultra Detail material they need to be cleaned up to remove the waxy residue left behind from the printing process.  This is done by soaking the parts in Goo Gone overnight.

Once the parts have had a good soak they are rinsed off with water and left to dry.  As they dry they will turn opaque and can now be painted if required.  If you dont clean off the waxy residue it will prevent paint and glue from adhering to the surface of the part.

With all the parts clean and dry it was time to do some test fitting.  As designed, they all fit together perfectly, and with a spot of glue will be come a solid enclosure.  The Zimo speaker is also a perfect fit; it actually fits better into the 3D printed part than it does into the injection molded enclosure it came with.

The depth of the enclosure can now be easily adjusted by 1.5mm by adding or subtracting a wall section.

These means you can create any size enclosure that you need.

It even fits into the base on its own should you be very tight on space.

The next stage is to do some testing to see how it sounds compared to the stock enclosure.  As a comparison here is a video of the stock speaker that comes with the decoder.  You can hear the engine running and me sounding the horn.

Next we have a video with the Zimo speaker fitted on its own.  A word of warning; the speaker is designed so that you can solder wires to it, but remember a speaker has a powerful magnet inside and if you are not careful it will attach itself to the soldering iron and get very hot, causing damage to the speaker.

The speaker on its own is very quiet as there is nothing behind it for the sound to bounce off.

Then we have a video showing the Zimo speaker with and without the stock enclosure.  When the speaker is lowered onto the enclosure the volume gets much louder.

And finally we have the Zimo speaker and the 3D printed enclosure made from three wall sections.  The volume increase using the 3D printed parts is roughly the same as the stock enclosure.

The parts that made up this enclosure were not glued together for the test so the sound should get even better once they are all sealed up.

I will shortly be making these speaker enclosures available via Shapeways and through my blog where you will be able to get them in different quantities.