A Good Damping Material Audio and Electronics
Audio and electronics are very sensitive to vibrations and noise. They can not only interfere with sound quality, but also cause tracking errors or skipping or interference with other components. Whether you are dealing with laptops, towers, video game systems, your stereo, TV, or automobile audio systems, vibration needs to be addressed. The control of vibration is important for two reasons: firstly, personal comfort, health and safety may be adversely affected if humans are subjected to excessive vibration. Secondly, equipment suffering from external vibration may not perform as required, or a piece of vibrating equipment may cause adjacent machinery or equipment to perform in an unsatisfactory way.
Why are damping materials used?
Vibration damping material is used to reduce or eliminate noise in electronic applications caused by resonance and vibration. Damping materials work by changing the natural vibration frequency of the vibrating surface and thereby lowering radiated noise and increasing the transmission loss of the material. Many applications and products are subject to vibration from internal, as well as external sources.
What is a good damping material audio and electronics?
Audio experts from around the world recognize Sorbothane® as the leading material for absorbing and cancelling vibrations that can adversely affect audio and video performance. Sorbothane is a viscoelastic polymer. Although it’s a solid, it behaves like a liquid in relationship to vibrations. Vibrations excite the loose bonds between the Sorbothane molecules, causing them to rub against each other and change the vibration energy into quickly dissipated heat energy. Sorbothane is used in shock/vibration mounts, stud mounts, and grommets/bushings in fields such as electronics/audio equipment.
Sorbothane is a proprietary viscoelastic polymer with a very high damping coefficient. It combines shock absorption, good memory, vibration isolation and vibration damping characteristics. While many other materials exhibit one of these characteristics, Sorbothane combines all of them in a stable material with a long fatigue life over a very wide temperature range. No synthetic rubber or polymer can dissipate energy as effectively. Sorbothane is a unique material and may be the best solution to many types of situations where vibration damping is a must. It is a polymer blend and can be designed to conform to any shape or size as well as made to be any thickness that is needed. It does not add bulk or weight to an item and is better able to withstand a wide range of temperatures or fluctuations in temperatures without hardening, melting or getting sticky.
Sorbothane has been instrumental in the audio industry as isolation feet for system components such as CD/DVD players and speaker isolators. When used in a constrained or extensional layer configuration, Sorbothane is an excellent medium to damp out structure-borne vibration. Sorbothane is the vibration isolation solution for all Hi-Fi and Audio equipment including speakers and equipment stands and supports. It can be used under CD players, turntables, amplifiers, tuners and any other Hi-Fi components. Sorbothane sheets are frequently used to line the walls of acoustic test chambers and wave tanks.
Sorbothane is also used in the electronics industry to protect hard disk drives from shock and vibration. Sorbothane isolators are found in desktop, laptop and wearable PCs.
Not only is Sorbothane used for vibration control, but Sorbothane engineers have also designed effective, gasket-type and corner mount isolators to protect LCDs and plasma displays. Protection from drop shock damage is particularly vital in hand held devices such as bar code scanners, PDAs, cell phones and portable medical devices.