Custom CD Player

From Mod Mania

For my major project I am intending to turn a Mannequin torso named 'Hank' into a CD player. Trust me, it will be awesome.

This is Hank, how he sat in our lounge room before the mod.

Due to size limitations, I will no longer be turning Hank into a CD player as such. The new plan is to turn him into a kind of speaker dock type thing. I will transplant a set of computer speakers into him, and create a sort of inset for a Discman or Mp3 player to sit, which will have a cord to plug into the headphone jack. So when a discman is plugged in, he will pretty much be a CD player, just not an all-in-one-unit...

1 Method

Method

Speakers

Here are the computer speakers ready to be disected.

I am wanting to get those speakers and all their circuitry out of their original cases so that they can be fixed to their new case, Hank.

The obvious place to start is unscrewing the two parts of the case.

The speaker is still fixed to the jack at the back of the case, so that needs to be unscrewed aswell.

Then after prying the protective cover off, I was able to unscrew the speaker itself.

And there we have speaker number 1 (the easiest one) out of its case ready to be transplanted.

On to speaker 2 then. The method for removing this speaker is relatively the same as with speaker 1. That is, unscrewing the back of the case and the jacks, then prying off the cover and unscrewing the speaker.

This is the speaker with the controls on it, including on/off, volume and bass. This also means it is the speaker with most of the circuitry as can be seen in the images.

This is all well and good, except it means that unlike in speaker 1, the front case does not simply come off once the speaker is unscrewed from it. This is because the circuitboard and such is too big to fit through the speaker hole. SO, I had to get creative :D

Nothing a little sawing can't fix, and now speaker 2 is also free.

Last of the speakers is the big one, the subwoofer. This contains the transformer and possibly some other stuff I don't know about...

Once again, the rear case was unscrewed, as was the jack. The jack was really annoying on this one though because it had a couple of tiny nuts on the inside that I had to try to hold while I unscrewed the other side. Eventually though the subwoofer was also obtained. Look at the happy family. Awww.

I'm thinking at this point I am going to leave the transformer n such in the case and then just fit the case inside Hank. This is mainly because a) it requires less effort, b) I don't know much about transformers and wouldn't want to screw anything major up, and c) then I don't need to worry about how to fit each of those components, because they are already fitted.

Next step: TORSO HOLES!

Torso Holes

So the basic layout for the speakers is as follows:

The first step is to draw up where the holes will need to be cut. To actually cut the holes, a jigsaw will be used. In order to get the jigsaw blade in, some holes must first be drilled.

Really, only one hole needs to be drilled for each speaker hole to be cut out, but to make jigsawing easier, it is a good idea to drill several holes around the circle, so that you can stop at each one and rotate the mannequin as needed.

Now the jigsaw can be used to cut out the holes.

I found that the circles are easier to cut out if you are turning inwards, that is, if you're right-handed to be cutting counter-clockwise around the circle.

Cut out the other two holes in the same way. I think I got neater with each one.

I realised that the easiest way to have the controls in Hank, would be to use part of the original speaker box that had the controls/circuitboard.

A hole would need to be cut out of the torso for this part as well, so to get the right size I made up a little paper template, and then traced that onto the body.

Then this was cut out in the same way as the speaker holes, with drilling and jigsawing.

Drilling Screw Holes

Next, small holes need to be drilled around the speaker holes, so they can be screwed in.

Controls Gluing and Speakers Screwing

Although the cicuitboard is held by the controls unit I have cut up, it no longer has something holding the back end of it. This means that when the 'on' button is pushed, the whole circuitboard could be pushed out. To solve this, I am simply using a hot glue gun to hold the circuitboard in place.

Next comes gluing this whole controls unit into the hole that was cut earlier.

As you can see, I've also started to screw in the speakers. It is easier to plug the speaker in to the circuitboard before screwing it into place.

Power Cord Exit

Once the sub box (the one with the transformer) is inside Hank, there will need to be somewhere for the power cord to come out, so he can sit flat.

To even get the sub box into Hank though, some work needs to be done. Here is the bottom hole how it was, and after I cut it out a bit.

I figured what better place than back and center, so I drilled a hole there.

Now obviously the power cord won't fit through such a small hole, so I need to jig saw up to that hole, from the bottom hole.

Sub Box

Even with the cutting out of the bottom hole, the sub box is still too big to fit into Hank, so some cutting is required. I used a hacksaw, mainly because I thought it was less likely to ruin everything than the jigsaw, even though the jigsaw would have been quicker.

Now that the sub box can fit inside Hank, it needs to be fixed in. So I called on my trusty Hot Glue Gun once more.

Review

Here is Hank so far. He is pretty much finished, and in working order. All that is missing is somwhere to put the MP3 player/discman while it is plugged in.

Device Shelf

I decided to use this piece I had left over as the shelf. It is the Sub's cover, cut down and without the fabric.

To fix it, I simply held it in place on the Hank's neck and traced through the mesh where I would drill. Then after drilling some holes I screwed it into his neck.

Final Touches

I found out afterwards that Hank's neck isn't actually level. So to make the shelf level, I placed some washers under the screw on Hank's left.

I decided to drill another hole in the back of Hank's neck for the 3.5mm jack to come through. This makes it look neater, and is nice and close to where the device would be sitting.