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| Re: R11/R13 Fiberglass Insulation and Environmental Health [message #69351 is a reply to message #35824] |
Tue, 06 September 2011 08:54   |
sippy
Messages: 7
Registered: August 2011
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Esquire |
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Hi there,
This is a topic i was going to ask about.........
I work with composites, ie boat building, race car / motor bike body parts and surfboards using both glass and carbon in both open and chop veriety. We in the industry are about as anal as it gets regards handleing / working with these materials. One would think because the cloth is sized to help stability / the bonding process during lay-up would go some ways towards mitigating the issue of loose fibers - WRONG!
Now, obviously the quantity of loose fiber is slightly less in a loudspeaker than in say a 30ft hull, BUT insulation glass is a non sized random mass (for want of a better description) and is downright evil an i personaly wouldnt use it as a speaker stuff.
Obviously there are ways to get around this loose fiber problem:
1. Work outside when doing your stuffing
2. Wear a modicum of safty items - ie use disposable gloves and goggles, 'Ooooo, my eye itches' and you forget and rub it with fibered fingers.
3. IF you have to stuff in a closed space, wear a mask AND NOT ONE OF THOSE PAPER JOBBIES WITH A STRIP OF METAL THAT GOES OVER YOUR NOSE - they do a sum total of nothing regarding protection, get yourself a cheap cartridge filter mask - itll make diy'ing a whole lot more pleasent (buy one befor you make your cabinets out of MDF... considered to ba as evil as f/g)
4. If yo get in a mess (fore-arms are the usual suspect spot) dont wash yerself with warm or hot water as this will open your skins pores and alow fiber ingress, rinse without rubbing with plenty of COLD water, then use detergents.
I'd say if you think about the stuffing stage, you could remove the possibility of the cabinet breathing out loose fibers by sizeing the glass as its installed with realy well watered down pva glue sprayed on useing a plant spray, beforethe stuff goes in. These are dirt cheap - 99 pence in the uk - not a huge drop in the ocean compared to the cost of your spanking new speekers or health.
As for the center of cabinet drape stuffing, could it not be bagged with something like silk or very light nylon lineing material? I dont see any problems with this idea other than slightly more effort......
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| Re: R11/R13 Fiberglass Insulation and Environmental Health [message #69355 is a reply to message #69351] |
Tue, 06 September 2011 11:02 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18783
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I absolutely hate working with the stuff. I've spent enough hot summer Oklahoma evenings in an attic running cables to learn to absolutely loathe fiberglass insulation. Nothing worse than being in a hot, sweaty attic. Even just the few minutes putting the R13 in a loudspeaker in a nice cool air-conditioned room kinda sucks.
But I've tried other damping materials over the years and find most to be lacking, some really bad. What I often find in other padding materials is they are less effective at attenuating midrange. Sometimes not only that but they can also modify cavity resonance and detune the box. I'm not sure if the problems with other materials are that the fibers are too heavy and/or rigid to vibrate and absorb energy or if it's more of a bulk/mass thing where the sheets just acts like a solid block. Could be a little bit of both. But whatever the case, I find good old fiberglass insulation works best.
Fiberglass insulation may be a little irritating to your skin when you install it, but once it's there it doesn't enter the air. The sound of the loudspeaker may vibrate the fibers, but they don't break free. And glass is a quite benign, really. It does not cause cancer, and is probably one of the safest fiberous materials to use. It's not like asbestos, but probably gets associated with that in some people's minds because it looks similar. So I think it is probably the best, safest and most effective material to use for this purpose. I find no downside to using the stuff.
After the damping material is installed, once it is in the speaker and has settled down, I don't object to it at all. I don't find that it sheds enough particulate to matter. There's far too much other particulate in the air for me to get excited about the insulation inside a speaker. The insulation in a loudspeaker pretty much just sits there, even when the cabinet is vented. Subs rarely use insulation, so the kinds of cabinets that pump a lot of air don't have the stuff in them. Speakers used as mains don't have the same kind of displacement.
One look at the HVAC ducts in a home, the way they're "sealed" with duct tape, is enough for me to realize that's ten-thousand times more prone to pushing R13 into the air supply than a loudspeaker. So my thinking is if you're worried about fiberglass in the air, focus on that first. If you can get the environment so clean that the tiny particulate produced by a loudspeaker makes a difference, I think you would pretty much be living in a sterile Class 100 cleanroom.
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That is a great idea! It should be fine enough to do the job. Does anyone know if they will change how the 4pi sounds?
