Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knows of a case for the Model B?
We are currently designing very unique Raspberry Pi cases. The cases will be manufactured on 3D Printers here in the UK and our aim is to make our cases customisable, so that customers can make their cases unique to them.
We are marketing them at a very reasonable price and are also donating a 5% stake of our profits to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
We currently have a range of colours which can be mixed and matched, and each case has an exclusive case number.
You can check out more designs at http://www.modmypi.com/
Any feedback would be great!
In my opinion the hype that surrounds 3D printing is well deserved. Its a brand new and innovative technology and, unlike many technologies, its open source, which opens up development to the community. You know they are developing it for use in the aerospace and automotive industries with metal? Its set to completely revolutionise how parts are manufactured.
I accept the attitude of "I won't belive it until I see it", its totally understandable, but i genuinely think you would be surprised at the quality of prints when they are completed with thought and care.
Here's a little hype if your interested over the manufacture of an 'impossible' object:
The reason we haven't posted any pics of our prototypes yet is the simple fact that we haven't finalised the design, and this won't occur until we are completely happy with the cases and feedback from the renders. At the end of the day renders can be quickly updated to reflect design changes and we simply want our physical case to be our final and perfect design.
What can I say? I am a complete and self confessed advocate and fan of 3D printing. I've been involved with it for quite a period of time now, and I think its versatility and adaptability is spectacular. But that is my opinion.
I think we will have to disagree on the first point I'm afraid. The software behind 3D pinters is open source, hence the physical printers based upon this software are open source. IMO I would not call the MakerBot 'very primative', check it out http://www.makerbot.com/
I never meant to insinuate that the metal 3D printers where part of the open source movement, I was just using them as an example of how far 3D printing technology has come in recent years. If this was inferred incorrectly i apologise.
Who's to say that the production of Raspberry Pi cases won't be the first maintream production process of 3D printing? I'm pretty enthusiastic about it, and with support and positive criticism, I don't see why it's not achievable.
I would like the pictures to be perfect because I am a perfectionist. I want to demonstrate the the product we will be producing is high quality. I want to be able to take a hundred pictures and show the world how good 3D printing is. The prototypes we have at the moment are just that, prototypes. They have been created to get the right fit, form and feel.
I agree 3D printing will find its place, and I don't see why the 3D printing revolution 
can't start here.
Its a fact that everything comes in varying levels of expense. You cannot compare a Makerbot with professional FDA printers just as you can't compare a Lamborghini Gallardo with an Audi A4 (oh yes i did just compare 3D printers to cars). This isn't to say the A4 is a bad car or 'primitive' just as the Makerbot isn't a 'primative' printer. They are simply in different classes, and designed for different purposes.
The HP is just a Stratasys with an HP badge on it and a mark-up, however many people would choose the HP over the Stratasys because of marketing and brand recognition. Again, the Stratasys isn't worse, it just doesn't have the right badge.
The RepRap and similar brings 3D printing into an environtment accessible to everyone and IMO this is a good thing. Companies like HP will always commercialise and market their products as being better, but is a £15,000 printer really £14,000 better than a £1,000 one. In my experience I would say no.
That isn't to say you can create an incredibly realistic inlet manifold for a car with a RepRap, if you want to do that, go by the HP. But in terms of creating a small quantity of simple, quality, cases for the Raspberry Pi. I say a resounding YES I CAN!
With care, attention and creativity in design, manufacture and post-processing you can get super high quality prints from the open-source RepRaps.
In answer to your question: it will take approximately two hours including a little post-processing to make each of our cases. Pretty slow when you compare it to injection moulding I know, but as i said, we are not trying to compete with the big boys, we just want to carve our own little niche 
Thanks for the good luck, it's going to be great.
@Michael: I too am strongly opposed to hype, because hype runs counter to evaluating items and processes on their objective engineering merits. But I am also strongly opposed to perpetual naysaying, because that too rejects objective engineering judgment. This is as true for Raspberry Pi as it is it is for domestic 3D printing. Resisting hype is great, but don't become a perpetual naysayer either.
There are a zillion extremely good applications for RepRap-style 3D printing, and the main reason why it is powerful and important is simply that it places you in control of your own life as far as small plastic pieces go. With a 3D printer at home, you are no longer at the mercy of commercial (plastics) manufacturing like the entire rest of humanity is. The fact that you can make whatever YOU want is extremely empowering, and not having to use a commercial outfit like Shapeways is also faster and cheaper.
Of course domestic FDM/FFF has its downsides, lots of them, but all other manufacturing methods have their own disadvantages too, and the objective engineer doesn't reject any method out of hand. Instead, you match their pros/cons against your requirements for the task in hand and choose appropriately.
The most obvious downside of RepRap-style FFF printing is poor quality of surface finish, which is an inherent outcome of extruding molten plastic filament and depositing it in layers to build up your object. At the current level of RepRap technology based on 0.3-0.5mm nozzles and ~0.1mm positioning accuracy, this can never compete on surface finish with the injection molding quality which we have come to expect as "normal" for plastic goods, nor with the better commercial 3D printing technologies. But surface finish is not always important. Indeed, for many structural applications, it has no practical importance whatsoever, so rejecting domestic FFF for that reason is pure naysaying.
Of course, RepRap fanbois reject any criticism violently, just as Raspberry Pi fanbois do, but that goes with the territory of being a fanboi, all objective assessment is strictly forbidden. No good engineer is a fanboi, nor a perpetual detractor.
I'm building a RepRap-technology 3D printer, a Shapercube -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/morgaines/sets/72157627604533547/ -- but I'm not a fanboi, nor fangrrl. 
I'm fully aware of FFF's many downsides and often discuss them in the RepRap community, and those discussions are not always welcome when the fanbois are out in force. But I also know that when used appropriately, the technology is immensely effective, one of the most important developments in enthusiast manufacturing capability in recent decades.
The doors opened by its (relatively) low cost are as big as those opened by the $25-$35 Rpi, or probably more so. After all, you can buy a good commercial PC for 10 times the price of an Rpi, but you certainly cannot buy a commercial non-FFF plastics manufacturing machine for 10 times the cost of the cheapest RepRap. A 100 times the cost barely gets you into the right territory, so RepRap truly is revolutionary.
On the specific topic of cases for Raspberry Pi, RepRap-type printers can do the job perfectly well since a high quality surface finish is not an important requirement, or at least not a functional one. The reason why you haven't seen any printed examples yet is because nobody with a RepRap has received an Rpi board yet, and the Rpi documentation is too poor to support creating a well-fitting 3D case model from pure specs. The board's connectors are all over the place after all.
Once Rpi is everywhere that situation will change, and I expect that Thingiverse will have so many case designs for reprappers to print that the only "problem" will be excess choice.
Morgaine.
Not to mention that sometimes people do things a certain way simply because it's fun, for them. I once sand cast a wah wah pedal body, not because I had a requirement for a pedal that a herd of elephant rock musicians could use, but simply because I wanted to sand cast something and that was a fun idea. It's now undoubtedly the most robust wah wah pedal on the planet. 
Manufacturing methods are never good or bad in themselves. They are merely appropriate or not appropriate, which depends on your requirements for the end product and your requirements for the manufacturing process, which can even include fun.
Morgaine.
Bud Industries has developed two very novel approaches to enclosing the Raspberry Pi. Recognizing that components on the board may shift as people add components or the design teams continue to improve them, we created these patent pending enclosures to provide protection, fun looks, and the ultimate in flexibility.
Both are made from translucent red (or raspberry colored) ABS plastic so the user can see through the enclosure to the board.
The Pi Sandwich consists of an identical top and bottom with clips to secure the board. With open sides,it allows the complete flexibility of installing the cables in the most convenient way for the user. There is an optional silicone band that can be put around the "stantions" in the box to provide total enclosing. The user would just quickly cut holes in the silicone to allow for the cable access. The top and bottom fit together and are held by friction.
The Pi Plate provides more protection and would be best in an educational environment. It has a base and screw on lid, again with clips to secure the board in the base. The base has a large opening, allowing for cables to be fed under the enclosure and through the base to the board. A big feature of both boards is that they require no hardware.
For more details, check out the Bud page http://www.budind.com/view/Plastic+Boxes/Microcomputer+Enclosureshttp://. There is a cad video demonstation that shows the features of these products. They are completing tooling now and should complete production and will be available in about 4 weeks. They are very low priced should help solve the enclosure issue.
