Oh well

I've had this dream for ages of developing a general-purpose subwoofer suitable for various events and all kinds of music. It should, of course, be made of wood and have wheels so that even someone with a little strength can move and set it up.

Admittedly, I've been looking for 18-inch drivers for quite some time and found a series or similarly constructed ones. Here's a little info about them. AliExpress can't really compete with the shipping costs, and I can't find any datasheets with the values ​​for calculations for most of the cheaper ones, so I thought I'd look on other sites. But there's nothing decent in the under $100 price range. So I came up with something new and decided on eBay. For us in Europe, or rather Germany, it's like Facebook Marketplace. I've noticed this before: when Linus Tech Tips suggested checking out Facebook Marketplace, there were absolutely no listings within a 100-kilometer radius. Oh well, eBay does the trick too.

Then I decided on the 18-500 driver, these are built pretty much the same and have 500 watts RMS power and between 1500 and 2000 watts peak power. Which amplifier to use is still a mystery, but at the events my friend and I do as volunteers, someone donated a relatively high-powered amplifier for our existing 12-inch subwoofer, which is completely inadequate and rattles because it got damp. Fun fact: There are four of us, and two of them created projects with Blueprint because I told them about it!

Then I watched this YouTube video about calculating the power requirements and was a bit overwhelmed. Well, I think I can figure out the basics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl05C8zepPs&list=WL&index=12

I didn't want to simply steal this file for calculations, so I continued my search on my best friend YouTube, and after searching forever, I finally found something good. I had already seen the WinISD software several times, and with this tutorial, I dug out an old laptop with Windows 10 and, despite some complications (I hate you, laptop battery!), got everything installed and ready to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZNeYBYGRKk

Then, with the help of chatgpt, I found this datasheet, which I hope is the right one for the speaker driver I've selected. It's supposed to cost only 89 euros on eBay, which is roughly equivalent to 100 dollars. I'll continue with the calculations tomorrow, that should go relatively quickly because as soon as the graphs and values ​​are finalized, I can start modeling in Fusion, and that shouldn't take too long.

One thing is certain: I'll be paying for the wood I'll be using to build the chassis myself, as otherwise, I'll exceed my budget, according to my brain.