Alex Reben and I tried to make some better looking prototypes this week for our Collapsible Aural Space project… but they look like they did before.

Mark Feldmeier thinks it would be silly to redesign a 100W amplifier, and suggests we think of an easier way to make this prototype work on the 100 dollar budget that we have. It looks like we’re going to be using our laptops and Skype for communication, and we’re going to wire up each listener, and not try to make it a portable object just yet.

Right now we’re embedding the magnet in the pen using foam, so that it does not rattle around in the PVC pipe around it. The giftee bites down upon the shell now, and not on an extension of the magnet. That allows us to increase the volume while keeping the magnet as small as possible.

For this prototype we lathed some PVC piping to fit our smaller coil and inserted the magnet into the pipe with foam. The pipe itself can still be made smaller to accommodate an easier bite.