[chbot] 'Printing' an enclosure

[Chris Hellyar]

Or route/mill/drill them?? A ‘subtractive’ process seems more sensible than starting with nothing for this type of thing???

I know there is the ‘But it’s 3D printed’ factor…  But 3d printing a rectangular sheet of plastic with holes in it just doesn’t seem like a good use of the technology when you could start with a rectangular bit of plastic and cut/drill some holes in it far faster.  Just saying. :-)

Keith is probably far more efficient and ecologically sound mind you, in some cases I’ll start with a 20mm thick block of material and machine a pocket in it to give a 2mm tick ‘bottom’ of the case.  It’s amazing how much space swarf takes up compared to the cavity it’s cut from! :-)

I always justify it by telling myself that a standard zippy style project box would not be as good and about the only time that’s been true was a few I did last year for ‘Rig Runner’ style Anderson power pole DC power distribution blocks.  per:

http://logicalit.biz/forumimages/140920-0.jpg  - render
http://logicalit.biz/forumimages/140920-1.jpg  - partially cut, a couple of tool changes in from memory.
http://logicalit.biz/forumimages/140920-2.jpg  - tada, power LED missing, that’s what the empty hole is.

The result justified the effort in this instance as the end product was better for my needs than the commercial units but if I had to bill the time for the drawing and setup it’d get messy! :-)

Cheers, Chris H.

On 17/09/2014, at 9:20 pm, Keith Colson <next at pitstock.com> wrote:

> Re: 'Printing' an enclosure
> 
> A good way to do case lids is cut them in a laser cutter. I normally laser cut a lid holder first that I can place 1 to "N" number of lids into the holder for perfect alignment.

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