To speed iterative prototyping and fixture creation for some assemblies and housings, IAR has brought reliable and low-cost FDM prototyping in-house. Common items we print include speaker baffle adapters, customer housing mockups for probe microphone measurements, or other fixtures to support device assembly or measurements. Maximum print size on this device is approximately 9 x 8 x 8 inches. High-resolution SLA and smaller assemblies will continue to be sourced from a handful of Indianapolis-based prototyping shops.

 Many far-field voice devices employ beamforming microphone arrays to improve speech recognition and communication performance. However, often the simulation of the acoustic wave during DSP design only includes phase differences due to array spacing and neglects more complex geometry such as element porting, enclosures, tables or walls.  These objects cause diffraction and reflections of the incoming acoustic wave around the sensor can lead to errors in beamforming and direction-of-arrival algorithms. IAR can use Comsol Multiphysics or Lumped Element Simulation (depending upon the complexity of geometry, frequency range of interest and available time) to provide simulated complex acoustic pressure “vectors” to DSP designers to improve the performance of the array including geometric features, prior to any prototype production or PCB fabrication.