Benson Locomotive Works Update
It's hard to believe that almost three years have passed since I last posted to this thread!
My life has continued to be very busy running my small business, and with my two teenage daughters hitting High School. Most of my hobby time is limited to short slices of 1-2 hours at most, and often I find that I'm too burnt out to tackle projects that require a lot of thinking.
Unfortunately I'm still not in a position to sell my speakers on a proper commercial basis.
Even if I had the time to setup a website and document all the installs, with me being located in New Zealand, shipping to the USA has become almost impossible due to the end of the de minimis exemption for small packages under USD800.00. I would now need to partner with a US distribution party, and make sure that they had adequate stock via large single shipments. Unfortunately, this is not currently practical for such a niche product with so many potential SKUs.
That said, my work on my library of BLW Speakers has continued, so it is probably worth a brief update.
DLP 3D Printing
I've switched from an AnyCubic Mono 6K to a new AnyCubic D2 DLP printer. This has greatly improved the strength and detail of my prints — thanks to recommendations on The Railwire.
CUI 9x25mm Speaker Testing
I edited a couple of versions of my 9x16mm enclosures to support the larger CUI 9x25mm for A/B testing. I tested a 9x25mm SD45-2 enclosure because this is extremely roomy, and also produced two versions of my new enclosure for the Atlas Dash 8-40BW — which in contrast is quite space constrained.
The results were surprising — the CUI 9x25mm was louder, but clearly inferior in both enclosures. Even once turned down, there was no improvement in bass, and the overall sound clarity was worse.
This was a bit disappointing, as the form factor was good for a number of my models.
Instead, the Ole Wolff 9x16mm has now become my "standard" go to speaker.
Atlas Dash 8-40B/W Speaker
I have designed and tested a speaker enclosure for the new Atlas Gold/Silver ESU chassis for the Dash 8-40B and Dash 8-40BW with the 9x16mm speaker lined up with the negative space below the radiator panels. For more info on this obsession — check out this post:
https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=61158.0Next on my list are new speaker enclosures for the Atlas Dash 8-40CW, the Scale Trains SD40-2, and Scale Trains SD40T-2 Tunnel Motors.
For anyone located outside of the USA, please send me a PM if you are after any of my existing designs and I will try and work something out.
Cheers
