Introduction: Beats by Miles and Div

This is an easy, step by step guide to making your own DIY headphones!

Step 1: Materials

You will need

- Some sort of cup or cup shaped container. You'll need two of these

- A roll of copper wire (you won't use it all, but get a lot, as you WILL make mistakes)

- 2 (minimum) neodymium magnets

- Plastic Wrap

- A Headband

- 3 or 4 sheets of felt

-Duct tape or hot glue

-Sandpaper

-An AUX plug

- A music source like your phone or computer

-A thick expo marker

-Electrical Tape

Most of these item can be found at Fry's

Step 2: Making the Voice Coil

Steps for Making a Voice Coil:

1.Get an Expo marker, one of the thick ones.

2. Sand about an inch of the wire on each end.

3.Make a ring of tape around the tip of the marker, sticky side facing outwards.

4. Start coiling copper wire around the tape, keeping the coils very tight and close to each other.

5. Once you have reached the wanted number of coils ( We have 45 coils, but for higher quality, make more coils) stop coiling.

6. Take the cap off of the marker.

7.Without pulling on the coils themselves, pull the tape off towards the tip.

8. You have now made a voice coil!

Step 3: Making the Headphones

Step 1. Glue or tape the magnet to the bottom of your cup shaped object. If it's made out of metal, then it will attach automatically since it's a magnet

2. Put your voice coil over the magnet, so it's inside the coils.

3. Tape the voice coil down to the magnet with electrical tape

4. Put plastic wrap over the mouth of the cup

5. Make sure there is a good amount of wire coming out of the coil. If there is not, cut off some more wire and sand the ends of that, and wrap/tape them together.

6. Attach both wires to the AUX plug.

7. Test if they work, if not refer to the troubleshooting section

8. If they do work, repeat steps 1-7 with the other cup to make the other ear

Step 4: Putting the Final Headphones Together

  1. Hot glue the end of the headband to the top of the cup
  2. Make sure it's near the mouth of the cup
  3. Hot glue the other end of the headband to the same spot on the other cup
  4. Hot glue or tape felt all around the headphones so it is soft and not cold and hard against your head
  5. Cover all visible wire with electrical tape
  6. Attach both ends of a voice coil to one terminal on the AUX plug
  7. Attach both ends of the other voice coil to the other terminal
  8. Plug in your headphones and they should work!

Step 5: Time Lapse of Sanding the Wire and Coiling the Voice Coil

Step 6: Headphones Playing Music

The final headphones playing music

Step 7: Troubleshooting

If sound isn't coming through clear or loud enough, try gently pressing on the voice coil

If you don't hear anything, make sure the ends are properly sanded down.

If nothing is coming through, make sure the two ends of the voice coil don't touch each other at any point

Make sure the AUX plug is securely plugged into the audio source

Step 8: 3 Main Components

The three most important parts of a speaker are the voice coil, the magnet, and the diaphragm.

The voice coil is important because because it causes vibrations to make the sound.

We need the magnet because it provides the magnetic field, vibrating the voice coil.

The diaphragm is important to producing sound since it directs the air particles in a certain direction

Step 9: Why Voice Coils Vibrate

Voice coils vibrate because the electromagnetism from the magnet is flowing through the voice coil, reversing the polarity back and forth, vibrating and making noise.

Step 10: How Vibrations Turn Into Sound

The vibrations compress air particles and eventually they end up spreading out again, which is what a transverse wave is, which transfer energy we perceive as sound.

Step 11: Prototyping Results

While prototyping, we found:

  • If the wires aren't firmly connected, then the noise can be distorted
  • If the coil is too tightly taped down, it cannot vibrate
  • When connecting two wires, they need to be close together or else the electricity won't properly flow through the wires.