In this video, I tackle the unique challenge of installing speakers in aluminum ceiling tiles for the first time. While I’m no stranger to speaker installs in drop ceilings, thin aluminum tiles require a different approach. I walk you through the process, from securing the speaker bracket to cutting the tile with an oscillating tool, all while sharing tips to ensure a smooth install. Plus, I offer a few tricks to avoid damaging the fragile aluminum. If you’re a tech looking to learn something new or prepping for a similar install, this guide has you covered!
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🎥 Video Transcript:
Have you ever installed speakers in aluminum ceiling tiles? Well, I hadn’t.
I’ve done a lot of speaker installs in drop ceilings.
But this was my first time to do one in an aluminum ceiling tile.
This install was at an active construction site, so there’s a lot of high pitched beeping from the equipment.
So I’m going to have to do a voiceover for a lot of this video to cover up that beeping, because I don’t want to drive you totally bonkers.
I thought it was important to show you this video, even with the oddball audio, because I thought it would be very educational for a lot of you techs who may not have seen something like this, so let’s get into it.
Typically, we’re installing them in ceiling tiles.
Unfortunately, this is not ceiling tile. This is really thin aluminum. Presents a little bit of a challenge. In the speaker packet we’re going to have rails. And you should have a circular bracket for your grid. This is going to give your speaker support so that the weight is not sitting on this thin tile. Same thing you know with a regular ceiling tile.
So the first thing I would do is you want to line this up with your edges and get your screws in. In this spot, you’ll see that there are screw holes where you can slide this rail back and forth and line this up. We’re going to get that locked down in the correct position. And then we’re going to draw a circle so we know where to cut.
I’m trying to make sure that this is centered that we’re equally lined up on each edge. And then I’ve got my two screw holes here. And you want to look in your packet. Every packet is going to have screws to go with it. There’s two sets of speakers two sets of rails and two sets of screws.
So this bracket will support the weight of the speaker. So the speaker weight is not resting on the tile. And again we want to make sure that we’re roughly equal here. Now we can draw out our circle.
And anytime you’re doing your markings you always want to do it on the non-visible side. So if you make a mistake it’s not going to be visible to the public.
If you’re at all nervous about the circumference, you can just verify that the speaker will sit in the circle. So, you know, if you cut this, your speaker is going to sit in this grid.
Now of course, we’ve got the challenge of aluminum. And it’s very thin. So it’ll bend and dent really easily.
I drilled a pilot hole with my drill so that I’ve got something for my oscillating tool to grab.
I’m going to have to step this up a little bit, so I’m going to use a little bit larger drill bit. And then I’m supporting where I’m pushing here in the corner of this box so that I’m not going to bow the tile.
Now we’re going to use an oscillating tool. This is a bi-metal blade.
You want to make sure that you have one blade that will do plastic and wood,
and that you also have a blade that will cut metal.
You’re going to want to use ear protection when you’re making these cuts because this aluminum is incredibly loud.
Let’s make sure that the speaker fits.
Now we’re going to put this in the ceiling. And then we’ll bring our speaker up and install that from the bottom. The first thing we’re going to do is get our tile in.
Then we should be able to bring the speaker in from the bottom. All right. Now the speakers have screws that you’ll access from the bottom side. And by doing that it’s going to flip out this little lip which will go over the top of this tile. And there are four of those. And they’re all going to flip out and you’ll tighten them down and they’ll hold the speaker in place.
Okay, so I’ve got two of them in. So it’s holding.
There’s my third one.
And there’s my fourth one. So these are the little lips that I flipped out with the screws. And these hold it onto the grid.
All right. Then we’re going to tighten it up from the bottom so that it’ll close this gap. But this tile is so thin that it’s not going to actually be completely snug.
The biggest challenge with this is this tile has like absolutely no weight to it. So every time I’m pushing up with my drill, it’s just pushing the tile up out of the grid. So I’m having to hold it with my hand over the top.
Bet you guys never knew I could move that fast.
Now we have the speaker in place. We’re going to have to, of course, terminate the cables to it, and we’ll have to change the tap settings.
The tap settings are accessible from underneath, so we can’t put the grill on it quite yet.
And here’s our completed install. Let’s get you out in the field making money. See you in the next video.