Custom Case Made Entirely Out Of PCBs

February 27, 2015 by George Graves 39 Comments

So you’ve finished your project. You’ve got a wonderful circuit, a beautiful PCB, and everything works perfectly. You’re done right? Well, maybe not. Sure, a bare PCB might be fine for a dev board, but what if you have a LCD to mount, a knob that needs turning, and buttons that need pressing. Yeah, that potentiometer hanging off the board by a few wires isn’t so pretty, is it? So it’s time for a case. Yuck. We all hate modifying cases.

[Electrodacus] came up with a clever solution in the form of stacking PCBs to form a case. In his project, he actually has the circuitry spread across 3 PCBs, and uses surface mount connectors to connect them in a stack. Along the edges are specifically shaped PCBs to complete the enclosure. This technique could be used with only one PCB containing all the circuitry, and the others acting as the case sides and top.

In this solar battery management project, the base layer has most of the power circuitry. This layer uses an aluminum metal core PCB for heat dissipation. The center layer is home for the micro controller and supporting components. And the top layer is the “front panel” with capacitive touch buttons and a cut out for a LCD. The top layer silk screen contains the logo, button markings, and the pin out of all the connectors.

If you hate drilling and filling cases (as much as we do), this technique might be right for your next project.

[via EEVBlog Forums]

Designing And Printing A Custom Enclosure

June 5, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

enclosure

So you know how to design a circuit board, assemble the parts, and have a functional device at the end of a soldering session. Great, but if you want to use that device in the real world, you’re probably going to want an enclosure, and Tupperware hacked with an Exacto knife just won’t cut it. It’s actually not that hard to design a custom enclosure for you board, as [Glen] demonstrates with a custom 3D printed project box.

[Glen]’s board, a quad RS-422 transmitter with a PMOD connector, was designed in Eagle. There are a vast array of scripts and plugins for this kind of mechanical design work, including the EagleUP plugins that turn an Eagle PCB into a 3D object that can be imported into SketchUp.

Taking measurements from Eagle, [Glen] designed a small project box that fits the PCB. A few standoffs were added, and the board itself was imported into SketchUp. From there, all he needed to do was to subtract the outline of the connectors from the walls of then enclosure for a custom-fit case. Much better than Tupperware, and much easier than designing a laser cut enclosure.

Once the enclosure was complete, [Glen] exported the design as an STL, ready for 3D printing or in his case, sending off to Shapeways. Either way, the result is a custom enclosure with a perfect fit.

DIY Arduino Cases You Never Knew Existed

May 9, 2014 by Rich Bremer 23 Comments

There are sure a lot of varieties of Arduinos out there but there may even be more of a variety when it comes to Arduino Cases. Let’s take the most popular Arduino form factor, the Uno. Below are a handful of unique cases for the Uno-sized boards.

by [Megaduty], Arduino Protection Box

We’ll call this one robust. Although it is 3D printed, its intent is to be extremely protective of the inhabitant. Some extra thought went into this case, no tools are needed! After the Arduino snaps into place, so does the cover. There is an access door to get the input/output wires to the free world. [Megaduty] suggests that this contains $0.10 of plastic. Not a bad deal.

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Designing A Front Panel For A DIY Project

April 8, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 12 Comments

When building a one-off DIY project, appearances tend to be the least of our priorities. We just want to get the device working, and crammed into some project case. For those that like to build nicer looking prototypes [JumperOne] came up with a slick method of building a custom front panel for your DIY project.

The first step is to get the dimensions correct. You CAD tool will generate these from your design. [JumperOne] took these measurements into Inkscape, an open source vector graphics tool. Once it’s in Inkscape, the panel can be designed around the controls. This gets printed out and aligned on a plastic enclosure, which allows the holes to be marked and drilled.

With the electronics in place, the front panel gets printed again on a general purpose adhesive sheet. Next up is a piece of cold laminating film, which protects the label. Finally, holes are cut for the controls. Note that the display and LEDs are left covered, which allows the film to diffuse the light. The final result looks good, and can provide all the needed instructions directly on the panel.

[Thanks to Ryan for the tip]

Update: Tetris Handheld Get PCB And Case

February 12, 2014 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

update-handheld-tetris

Check out this sweet-piece of homemade handheld gaming! [Jianan Li] has been hard at work on the project and published the updates in two parts, one that shows off the PCB he had fabbed for the project, and another which details the 3D printed case. This is, of course, is the culmination of the Tetris project we first saw as an incredbily packed, yet thouroughly tidy breadboarded circuit.

We really enjoy the 8-sided PCB design which hosts all the parts and gives you a place to hold and control the unit, all without seeming to waste much real estate. The case itself is quite impressive. The openings for the square-pixel LED matrices (the original design had round pixels) and the bar graphs all have nice bevel features around them. The control area has a pleasant swooping cutout, with blue buttons which stand out nicely against the red. Check out the slider switch by his left thumb. He printed matching covers for this slider, and the two that stick out the bottom. Also on the bottom are female pin headers so that you don’t need to disassemble the case to interface with the electronics.

All of this and more are shown off in the clip after the break.

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RasPi “Inception” CD-ROM Case Mod

February 1, 2014 by Marsh 9 Comments

raspiInception

At first glance, [John’s] CD-ROM RasPi case may not seem all that unique, but we like both the implementation as well as the end-result functionality it provides. His goal was to use the Pi as a torrent downloader, and to store the downloaded files on a shared network drive. The Pi drive would slide into a bay in the server’s case—hence the Inception reference: a computer in a computer—allowing downloads while putting another step between the server and the outside world keeping, as well as guaranteeing that the network share would be available, because the server and the Pi would use the same power source.

[John] gutted the CD-ROM’s internals to leave only the PCB, which he stripped of most everything save for the power connector in the back. He then used the base of his old RasPi case as a standoff, mounting it to the top of the CD-ROM’s PCB. He soldered the power lines to the ROM’s power connector and temporarily hooked up a 5V adapter until he gets the server running. The final step was to carve out the back of the case for access to the Ethernet and USB ports, which [John] accomplished with a dremel, a hacksaw and a file. The front of the case still looks like a stock CD-ROM drive, and [John] has plans for future mods: re-purposing the LED to show network activity and modifying the buttons to serve as a reset, pause, or start for torrent downloads.

Atari 2600 Has A Raspberry Pi Hiding Under The Hood

June 26, 2013 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

raspberry-pi-2600

Seriously, the drawer pull on this Atari 2600 is not stock. Don’t they know this voids the warranty? The thing is, you won’t actually find any of the original internals anyway. When building this portable emulator housed in a 2600 case [Linear Nova] was careful to ensure that everything could be restored to its original condition (except for two hinges mounted on the back) sometime down the road. That’s a good goal to set for yourself. We think the build is the fun part of most projects and often wonder what to do with them when they’re done and our interest has waned.

A seven-inch LCD screen was attached to the underside of the lid using Velcro. When tilted up it’s at a nice viewing angle for the player. [Linear] prefers to use a Wii remote as the control this portable video game emulator. It connects to the Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth using a USB dongle. The advantage of this is that you just throw the remote inside the case too. For now there are two power cords, one for the RPi and the other for the LCD screen but he plans to add a power hub in the future to narrow this down to one. We wonder it that would also be a good time to add his own rechargeable battery pack option? There should be enough room for an RC style pack.