F Cone Speaker Driver made of French Flax Fibers by Focal

Made in France, Focal's Flax cones are oriented towards acoustic performance, high-tech and give an original design to the brand’s speaker drivers!

After more than five years of research and development, engineers at Focal reveal in 2013 a new cone made of high-quality flax fibers. F cones are characterised by their natural sound, with low coloration, their richness of reproduction in the midrange register and their tighter bass.

THE UNIQUE QUALITIES OF FLAX

F cones are made of high-quality flax fibers core enclosed by two thin layers of glass fiber. They satisfy the key criteria of a high performance diaphragm : high internal damping, high velocity of sound and high flexural rigidity.

Rigidity

All these criteria cannot be met by a mono-material cone. Sandwich technology greatly influences the neutrality of the sound produced by the cone, something, which has always been Focal’s hallmark. The expertise gained from the sandwich technology of the Utopia and K2 Power ranges enabled Focal to develop a revolutionary flax-fiber cone conciliating the 3 criteria.

Lightness

Flax is twice as light as fiberglass, because the fiber is hollow. It also has very low elasticity which makes it ideal to increase the flexural rigidity of a sandwich structure. Moreover, it can be obtained in non-woven bundles of considerable diameter and it can therefore produce the thickness required for a sandwich.

Internal damping

Composite materials have properties suitable for applications where both rigidity and low mass are required. However, their disadvantage is that they lack damping, which leads to very poor control of vibrations. Recent developments in this field combining composites and natural fibers have brought unexpected opportunities. Flax fiber has an excellent internal damping of the same order of magnitude as the glass or Kevlar® fibers or aluminum.