The disclosure relates to a method and a device of manufacturing a speaker according to a sheet to roll manufacturing process.
Vision and hearing are two humanity's most direct sensory responses. Therefore, scientists have been dedicated to develop various renewable visual and auditory related systems. Regarding the speakers, moving coil speakers dominate the entire market. In recent years, with people's increasing demands for sensing quality, and development trends of 3C products (computer, communication, consumer electronics) for lightness, slimness, shortness and smallness, a power-saving, light and slim speaker designed according to an ergonomic requirement is developed. Such speaker can be used in either large-size flat speakers or small walkman headphones and stereo mobile phones, and in a foreseeable future, such technology may have a plenty of demands and application development.
Presently, electroacoustic speakers are mainly grouped into direct and indirect radiation speakers, and according to driving methods thereof, the speakers are approximately grouped into moving coil, piezoelectric and electrostatic speakers. The moving-coil speaker is widely used, and a technique thereof is relatively mature. However, due to its innate structural defect, a shape of the moving coil speaker cannot be flatized, so that it is not suitable for applying to 3C products and home theatres having development trends of smallness and flatness.
In the piezoelectric speaker, according to a piezoelectric effect of a piezoelectric material, an electric field is applied to the piezoelectric material to cause deformation, so as to drive a vibrating membrane to generate sound. Although such speaker has a flat and miniaturized structure, its sound quality is limited.
Main products of the electrostatic speaker in the market include hi-end earphones and loudspeakers. A functional principle of the conventional electrostatic speaker is to use two fixed porous electrode plates to clamp a conductive vibrating membrane to form a capacitor, and by supplying a direct current (DC) bias to the vibrating membrane and supplying an alternating current (AC) voltage to the two fixed electrodes, the conductive vibrating membrane is vibrated due to an electrostatic force generated under a positive and a negative electric fields, so as to radiate a sound. The bias of the conventional electrostatic speaker has to reach hundreds to thousands voltages, so that an external amplifier with a high price and a great size has to be applied, and therefore application thereof cannot be widespread.
Presently, manufacturing of the speaker still applies a design and producing method of a single unit, for example, a speaker disclosed by a U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,199.
Regarding the electrostatic speaker, the U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,199 discloses an electroacoustic transducer structure. Referring to
In addition, according to the conventional techniques, during a mass production, individual units have to be produced one-by-one, and the speaker generally has a fixed size or shape, so that effective mass production and cost reduction cannot be achieved, and features of softness, thinness, low driving voltage and flexibility of the speaker cannot be achieved.
A device for manufacturing a speaker is introduced. The device comprises a first material feeder, a second material feeder, a cutting device, an inserting device, a temporary storage device and an extracting device. The first material feeder feeds a roll porous electrode material manufactured according to a roll-based manufacturing process. The second material feeder feeds a roll vibrating membrane material manufactured according to the roll-based manufacturing process. The cutting device cuts the roll vibrating membrane material into a plurality of sheet vibrating membranes. The inserting device inserts the sheet vibrating membranes into the temporary storage device. The extracting device extracts the sheet vibrating membranes from the temporary storage device, respectively placing the sheet vibrating membranes on the roll porous electrode material according to predetermined positions, and combining the sheet vibrating membranes with the roll porous electrode material to form a plurality of speaker units.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the embodiment, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate embodiments and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the embodiment.
A flexible or a portable electronic device generally has features of softness, thinness and flexibility, and various applications thereof have a feature of low driving voltage. In one of embodiments, a sheet-based or a roll-based manufacturing process is used to manufacture a speaker, by which a flexible speaker can be manufactured. In some circumstances, processes such as stamping, die casting, and/or die bonding, etc. can be used to effectively control a cost of the manufacturing process.
According to one of embodiments, the method for manufacturing the speakers having large vibrating membrane areas, irregular shapes, or other customizable features may have a flexible design.
In one of embodiments, a speaker apparatus can include a base, a vibrating membrane located above the base, an electrode located above the vibrating membrane and a plurality of supporters. In some embodiments, the supporters may have different configuration patterns or heights, which can be varied according to different applications and specifications.
When the vibrating membrane is actuated by an external voltage, a flat electrostatic speaker functions when a surface of the vibrating membrane is deformed due to charge characteristics of the material of the vibrating membrane and the electrostatic force. Deformation of the vibrating membrane can drive the air around the vibrating membrane to generate sound. The force exerted on the vibrating membrane can be deduced or estimated according to an electrostatic formula and an energy law. For example, such force can be a capacitance of the whole speaker times an internal electric field and an input voltage. Generally, the greater the force exerted on the vibrating membrane is, the greater the output sound is.
The electrostatic speaker can be designed to be light, slim and flexible. The supporters can be disposed on the electrode or the vibrating membrane by using or without using an adhesive. A layout of the supporters can be varied according to one or a plurality of design considerations, for example, an electrostatic effect of the vibrating membrane, and a frequency response thereof, etc.
Design variations of the supporters at least include variation of a disposing manner of the supporters and height variations of the supporters. For example, the supporter can have a dot shape, a mesh shape, a cross shape, any other shapes, or combination of two or more shapes. Under different design considerations, a distance between any two of the supporters can be adjusted according to a frequency requirement of hearing, a frequency response, or other hearing or structural considerations.
The supporters can be fabricated on the porous electrode or the vibrating membrane through transfer printing, decaling, or direct printing such as inkjet printing, or screen printing. In another embodiment, the supporters can be fabricated by direct adhesion. For example, the supporters can be pre-fabricated, and then the pre-fabricated supporters are disposed between the porous electrode and the vibrating membrane. Then, by directly attachment or indirectly attachment the supporters to the lower porous electrode or the vibrating membrane, the supporters are disposed on the vibrating membrane or the porous electrode. For example, the supporters directly adhered or indirectly adhered to the lower porous electrode or the vibrating membrane. In the other embodiments, the supporters can be fabricated according to etching, photolithography and/or adhesive-dispensing techniques.
In one of embodiments, the speaker unit can include a single porous electrode and a single vibrating membrane having charges. The flexible vibrating membrane having an electret can be used to manufacture the speaker unit according to a sheet-based and a roll-based manufacturing processes. Conversely, a conventional manufacturing process probably requires a specific design and a specific manufacturing process, so that regarding a same design of the mass production, a specific and individual speaker design is generated. According to the manufacturing method of the mass production, generally, the vibrating membranes and the speakers are respectively manufactured according to the same design, which is hard to be modified during the manufacturing process. For example, the stamping, the die casting and the adhesion processes can be performed in the roll-based manufacturing process conformed to the disclosure of the present embodiment to fabricate primary products (i.e. the vibrating membranes) of the speaker. The vibrating membranes can be fabricated in a large area, for example, a roll vibrating membrane is fabricated, and then a cutting process is performed to the roll vibrating membrane. The aforementioned manufacturing process can effectively reduce a manufacturing cost of the speaker. Especially, the roll primary product may have a characteristic of flexibility for various designs, especially for designs of large area, irregular shape or other customisable shapes, or designs requiring a plurality of variations.
Referring to
The porous electrode 220 can be made of a metal material, and in an embodiment, the porous electrode 220 can also be made by plating a layer of metal thin-film on an elastic material, for example, paper or a very thin non-conductive material.
A material of the electret vibrating membrane layer 212 can be a dielectric material. The dielectric material can retain static charges for a long time after being electrized, and after a charging process, a charge-maintaining effect is generated in internal of the material, so that it is referred to as the electret vibrating membrane layer. The electret vibrating membrane layer 212 can be made of a single layer or multi layers of dielectric material, and the dielectric material can be, for example, fluorinated ethylenepropylene (FEP), polytetrafluoethylene (PTFE), polyvinylidene fluride (PVDF), fluorine polymer, and other suitable materials, etc. Such dielectric material includes holes of micrometer size or nano-micro meter size in internal thereof. Since the electret vibrating membrane layer 212 is made of the electrized dielectric material, it can long time retain static charges and piezoelectricity, and internal of the electret vibrating membrane layer 212 has the nano-micro meter size holes, so that a transmittance and a piezoelectric property thereof are improved. Dipolar charges are generated in the internal of the material after a corona charging process, so as to achieve the charge-maintaining effect.
The metal thin-film electrode 214 can be a very thin metal thin-film electrode to avoid influencing a tension and vibration effect of the vibrating membrane 210. The so-called “very thin” refers to a thickness about 0.2 μm to 0.80 μm. In an embodiment, the thickness is about 0.2 μm to 0.4 μm, which can be 0.3 μm.
The electret vibrating membrane layer 212 filled with negative charges is taken as an example. A source signal 250 is a sinusoid (i.e. the source signal 250 has a positive voltage at one moment, and has a negative voltage at another moment), and the source signal 250 is respectively input to the porous electrode 220 and the metal thin-film electrode 214. When the source signal 250 connected to the porous electrode 220 has the positive voltage, the porous electrode 220 attracts the negative charges on the electret vibrating membrane layer 212 of the speaker unit structure 200, and when the source signal 250 has the negative voltage, the porous electrode 220 repulses the negative charges on the electret vibrating membrane layer 212, so that vibration of the vibrating membrane 210 is generated, for example, a direction 252 of force exerted on the vibrating membrane 210 as that shown in
Materials of the vibrating membrane 210, the porous electrode 220 and the frame supporter 230 of the speaker unit structure 200 can be flexible materials, which can be transparent materials, so as to increase a design diversity to form a soft flexible speaker.
During a manufacturing process of the speaker unit structure 200, the porous electrode 220 and the supporters 240 can be fabricated in a same process, and the vibrating membrane 210 and the frame supporter 230 can be fabricated in another process, which are described with reference of
As described above, the supporters 240 are located between the vibrating membrane 210 and the porous electrode 220. In an embodiment, an adhesive or other adhering methods can be used to adhere the supporters 240 onto a surface of the porous electrode 220, or an adhesive or other adhering methods can be used to adhere the supporters 240 onto a surface of the vibrating membrane 210, or the supporters are disposed between the porous electrode 220 and the vibrating membrane 210. For example, the supporters 240 can be adhered onto the surface of the porous electrode 220. The supporters 240 may have various shapes, for example, triangular prisms, cylinders, hexagons or rectangles. As described above, deployment, layout, height, shape and other features of the supporters can be changed according to one or a plurality of design considerations.
Referring to
The method of configuring the supporters 304 on the porous electrode 302 is to use a vibration mechanism or an alignment mechanism, etc. to position the supporters 304 at predetermined positions on the porous electrode 302. Referring to
In an embodiment, a super thin metal layer 404 can be formed on the vibrating membrane or a vibrating membrane material substrate 402 by sputtering, plating or coating an electrode layer, or the electrode layer can be formed by attaching a metal thin-film on the vibrating membrane. In an embodiment, a roll material of the vibrating membrane can be selected, designed or extended to obtain a suitable tension to suitably combine the frame structure with the vibrating membrane. A frame substrate having suitable tension can be formed on the vibrating membrane layer, so as to provide the frame structure 408 of
Moreover, the vibrating membrane 402 can be processed to provide charges. For example, a point discharge device 420 can be used to perform the charge-maintaining process (for example, a ferroelectric process or a corona discharging process). In an embodiment, the point discharge device 420 can use probes arranged in an array for discharging. In an embodiment, processing conditions such as temperature, humidity and a discharge level can be controlled to adjust or ameliorate the charging effect. Although the above processing is immediately executed after the frame structure 408 and the vibrating membrane 402 are combined, it can also be executed earlier or later during the manufacturing process.
Similar to the manufacturing process of
The super thin metal electrode layer 404 can be formed on the vibrating membrane 402 by sputtering, plating or coating an electrode layer, or the electrode layer can be formed by attaching a metal thin-film on the vibrating membrane.
Moreover, the vibrating membrane 402 can be processed to provide charges. For example, the point discharge device 420 can be used to perform the charge-maintaining process (for example, a ferroelectric process or a corona discharging process). In an embodiment, the point discharge device 420 can use probes arranged in an array for discharging. In an embodiment, the processing conditions such temperature, humidity and a discharge level can be controlled to adjust or ameliorate the charging effect. Although the above processing is executed after the frame structure 408 and the vibrating membrane 402 are combined, it can also be executed earlier or later during the manufacturing process.
Then, referring to
In the embodiment, the vibrating membrane 210 fabricated in the part (A) is cut into a plurality of sheet vibrating membranes, and the cut sheet vibrating membranes are inserted into a temporary storage device 520 through an inserting device. Then, an extracting device is used to extract the sheet vibrating membranes from the temporary storage device 520 and place the sheet vibrating membranes on the porous electrode 220 and the supporters 240 fabricated in the part (C), and then the sheet vibrating membranes are combined with the porous electrode having the supporters. The above steps are sequentially carried out according to a direction shown by hollow arrows in
Conversely, the above steps can also be sequentially carried out according to a direction shown by solid arrows in
Then, referring to
Referring to
Moreover, referring to
Moreover, in one of embodiments, the temporary storage device can also be a slide rail device.
In the aforementioned one of embodiments, the inserting device can hold the sheet vibrating membranes or the sheet porous electrodes through mechanical clamping, vacuum adsorption, or static adsorption, etc. Moreover, the extracting device can hold the sheet vibrating membranes or the sheet porous electrodes through the mechanical clamping, the vacuum adsorption, or the static adsorption, etc. The sheet vibrating membranes or the sheet porous electrodes can be combined with the roll porous electrode or the roll vibrating membrane through laminating or attaching.
Referring to
As shown in
The roll element 920 is transmitted by a transmission belt 940. The chamber structure 900 further includes a plurality of tension rod 950 for separating the sheet elements 910 form a support board 952 when the sheet elements 910 are loaded. The sheet elements 910 are downloaded to the transmission system one by one from the top of the tension rod 950. After the sheet elements 910 are loaded, a top end of the tension rod 950 can be fixed to the upper support board 952, and then fixed to the whole transmission system. By penetrating the tension rod 950 through the sheet elements 910, extra tension is provided, so that the sheet elements 910 can be more precisely combined with the roll element 920 without occurrence of distortion and deformation. When the roll element 920 enters a lower part of the chamber structure 900, and after it is combined to the sheet elements 910, a cutting tool 960 is used to cut the roll element 920 to form the speaker units.
Referring to
A plurality of buckles 936 are configured to the support protrusion units 934 on the transmission belt 932 of the chamber structure 900A, and the buckles 936 penetrate through the through holes 912 of the sheet elements 910A for buckling the sheet elements 910A, so as to provide extra tension to the sheet elements 910A. Since when the sheet vibrating membrane or the sheet porous electrode is placed on the lower roll porous electrode or the roll vibrating membrane, it has a certain degree of tension, so that it can be accurately combined without occurrence of distortion and deformation. The handle 938 can pull the sheet elements 910A, so that the sheet elements 910A can be smoothly separated from the support protrusion units 934 and the buckles 936.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the structure of the embodiment without departing from the scope or spirit of the embodiment. In view of the foregoing, it is intended that the embodiment cover modifications and variations of this embodiment provided they fall within the scope of the following claims and their equivalents.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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98144545 | Dec 2009 | TW | national |
This application is a divisional application of and claims the priority benefit of U.S. application Ser. No. 12/717,956, filed on Mar. 5, 2010, now pending, which claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 98144545, filed on Dec. 23, 2009. The entirety of each of the above-mentioned patent applications is hereby incorporated by reference herein and made a part of specification.
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 12717956 | Mar 2010 | US |
Child | 13541762 | US |