Raspberry Pi Model B Cases?

Have there been any other ideas for cases recently?

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!

Hello Jacob,

I don't think we live on the same planet:

There are commericially produced 3D printers like

http://www.europac3d.com/TheZCorpAdvantage.html

or

http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/3d-printers/index.html

or

http://printin3d.com/3d-printers/v-flash-personal-3d-printer

and compared with any of them the makerbot is primitive - it's cheaper but it's just not designed for serious use in a commercial environment (where it must work for months on end without maintenance etc).

And re the open source thing - the software and hardware of the RepRap etc is mainly open source but my point is that the software and hardware of the serious machines (Z-Corp, HP etc) most certianly is not.

Good luck with your boxes (btw how long will it take one of your 3D printers to make a box ?)

Michael Kellett

@ michaelkellett

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.

Jacob,

If ever you have stood beside an injection moulding machine, with a printer beside it printing the same part, you will understand why printing will never take off for production.

There are FAR better ways than printing parts for small runs. Mill or cast some aluminium moulds that you take off your master prototype, and fill them with casting resin. This is not a messy diy procedure, and is extremely sucessful at making quality parts fast if your willing to learn and get used of it. Plus, you have very little post prep to do. Maybe remove some moulding flash - thats it. resins can be had in all colours. No sanding, or painting needed.

You can also cast in threads by screwing in screws from the mould exterior. When resin is set, you screw them out. Perfect threads left in part.

Peace,

Brian Garvey,

@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.

I really don't care about all that discussion about 3d printing / inject moulding / quality....

It just from which perspective you look at it..

For me, I just want a case which answers my needs, and since everybody has different views how a case should look like, the best way

is just to design one yourself.  And then the problem arises after the design, how can I actually get it...

So now I have 4 different cases lying around, 2 done with RepRap (someone was nice for me to print it), and 2 done on shapeways.

And yes they have different qualities.. The reprap printer ones are simpler but very sturdy, but still good enough for me.

The shapeway one are much finer in detail and you can do more design tricks with it than a reprap version, but it is costly because there is

a commercial party involved.

any way, you have a choice...

- just wait until the manufacturers produce cases and choice the one you like (price,design)

- take a case from one of the smaller startups

- make your own using 3d printing, shapeways, perspex plates, modifying existing cases to fit a Pi

Hans

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.

@ Brian,

Nice one Brian !

Where do you get the casting resin ?

An BTW  - what kind of mill are you using and do you G-code yourself or use some kind of CAM software ?

Michael Kellett

Mike!

I get the resin from smooth on and have done for an age.

That mill is my Hurco Km3. Its an oldie, but I love it to bits. I can run circles around the newer hurco depending on what you are doing.

I retrofitted it at Christmas too. Old controls were starting to get on my nerves so I junked the lot.

Bought a pmdx-126 controller, (a legend bit of kit) some gecko drivers, a power prep module, and some amt encoders from digikey to use on my old servos.

The pc bit, I used a motherboard and bits I had here. For the transformer to drive motor, I took 4 turns off the hurco tranny to take down the ac secondary to where I needed it in respect to the dc out from power prep module(ac-dc + smoothing)

The machine is back, and all tidy still looking the same.

Build a new control panel too, housing lcd, wireless mouse, and keyboard, all on an arm.

Im running mach3 on this mill for machine control, and have recently bought cambam for drawing stuff with - it converts it to g-code then too.

Cambam is insane for the money, 2 days to learn, and 80odd euro. I use it nearly all the time, and then solidworks for the crazy stuff.

Its all about how you can draw something, and take cuts/jig. A 10mm end mill does a lot too.

I use the km3 for a variety of stuff, from hogging, to fine work on F3 parts, to casting patterns, to electronics prototypes.

Some people hate knee cnc mills, they have their pros and cons indeed, you just need to be able to spot those, and pick the machine that suits.

I do write some g-code as I learned it a long time ago, it keeps me in tune, and its fun at times. But mainly, I use the cam software if someone is paying...

Hope this helps Mike,

Brian!

Hello Brian,

Thanks for the Cambam tip - I'll take a proper look at it soon.

I've got a Haas TL1, and so far have only used G-code - I was looking at the Delcam plug in for Solidworks but it is mega pricey - especially compared with Cambam.

Thanks again.

Michael Kellett

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. 

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. 

That Pi Sandwich looks horrible.... patent pending ?

But that is just personal.. everybody has his own taste..

Hans