3d printed and airbrushed Raspberry Pi Case - Part 1

Based on the Raspberry Pi 1 case design in the link below, I redesigned a Raspberry Pi 3 case as it seems the Series 1 case's link to MyMiniFactory no longer works. It also is out of date and doesn't fit the new Pi's.

https://www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2015/7/30/design-of-the-week-raspberry-pie-case?rq=raspberry%20pi

Designed and modeled in 3ds Max.
Sliced in Simplify3d v4.0.1
Printed in 3d Fillies pla+ Green https://3dfillies.com/plaplus-filament-175mm-1kg/


The mesh needed to be manifold so the long process of weaving the crust as one solid water tight mesh began.
I avoided trying to boolean the sections together for just about every reason you could reasonably think of.

The hump or raised centre section was added using soft selection and a FFD modifier

The weave and the outer edge were bought together and Booleaned into one mesh
and while it isn't shown here, because at the time I was too deep into my process, it was then sculpted into the shape I wanted.

I just used simple box modelling techniques for most of this and added turbo or mesh smooth modifiers to get the rounded soft pastry look :-)

Called box modelling because it all starts with a box........no less.

A bottom was made for the top in Fusion 360 and imported back into Max to be mated with the top.

My logo was added on the bottom to satisfy my ego :-) and to help prevent someone passing it off as their own work. Something that the long long hours put into all of this, wont let me tolerate :-)

Here you can better see the sculpting and smoothing to remove the boxiness of it all

Continued in part 2

https://lukethier.blogspot.com/2018/11/3d-printed-and-painted-raspberry-pi-case.html

3d printed and airbrushed Raspberry Pi Case - Part 2

I used 3ds Max for most of the modeling and design.

Forgot some settings and had a hard time removing supports lol
Fits like a dream :-) now...........!

Because I was painting these (There were 6 of them to allow for mistakes) I printed them in 3d Filles pla+ Green  https://3dfillies.com/plaplus-filament-175mm-1kg/ as any colour would do.

You could easily have used white or another light colour that would match the top coat but I have years of experience painting things and knew I could cover the green.

A combination of Beige and grey Primer Filler were used to undercoat and fill the layer lines. I found the beige was a little better for this. I started with the grey then switched to the beige.

2 full cans ended up being needed to get the layers covered, with plenty of sanding in between.

The final colour was a beige automotive acrylic lacquer that was close enough to what I was after for my base colour. 3 cans of paint so far. Two undercoats and one top coat.

I rendered the top of the design in 3ds Max and scaled it to the correct size.

I then glued the paper with some spray adhesive to some card stock.

Then I drew around the inside of the raised sections that would get the darker colours
and cut them out with a stencil knife with a No 11 blade in it.

I printed the size of the width of the "pie" on the A4 paper, because I kept forgetting it :-) 102.3 mm

I then scored the card and folded the wings down to form a tent above the case so as not to touch the cases themselves.

I then airbrushed a combination airbrush water based acrylic paint and some ordinary acrylic artist paints I already had here. This allowed me to mix up any colour that I needed to.

There were about 5 or 6 colours used in the end to get the look I was after. The first 3 colours were all freehand painted without the mask and quite randomly applied.

The next 2 colours I used the mask to prevent paint from reaching the places I didn't want any of the darker colour to hit.

So working from lightest to darkest with creams and yellows and umbers and browns I built up the pastry to look nicely cooked and even a little over cooked.

The last and darkest colour was hand painted freehand with my airbrush.

When everything had dried, it was going to need a clear coat. This was always something that was going to happen as the water based paint over the lacquer was never going to adhere all that well and was going to wipe off during handling. Not easily, but over time if left un-coated.

So I used some picture varnish designed to go over both types of paint to protect artwork. Luckily I had this from other art projects.

There are some paints designed to do this and used a lot in the airbrush industry, but were way too expensive and I only needed a small amount so settled on this instead.

Here they are with a raspberry Pi fitted inside one of them. I had originally increased the scale of these by another 1% to make sure the RPi3 would fit comfortably.

The test fit prior to painting was fantastic so I plowed on ahead "Mr Plow!"

After they were painted they were much more difficult to fit in the cases. I suspect the 3d prints were still off-gassing and shrinking while they were waiting for paint and also were contracted even more by all the coats of heavy paints that followed.

The RPi3 still fit, but need to be patiently fitted into the case.

I have kept one of these for myself, one went to a friend who let me borrow his compressor after mine decided not to work

All the others are destined as Christmas presents for close friends that have supported me.over the years.

NASA Logo for 3d Printing

 

The picture below of the logo as stls joined in 3ds Max and coloured to show what it will look like after printing.

I traced the logo in Inkscape and took it into fusion and made 3 layers or colours for the stls.
The white base layer takes the shape of both the blue and red to both support and provide the white in the background.

The red swoosh may be a tight fit but the Blue will print as a whole and will remove in sections so print everything and lay it out prior to assembly and gluing.

EDIT:- This is pretty big and will need to be scaled down to fit a lot of 3d printers. I tried it at 30% in X and Y but kept the Z height at 100 as it is also very thin. I will change it at some point. :-) I still haven't had a successful print from it and suggest you try and print it doing filament swaps for maximum chance at not throwing it across a room lol

So print the white then swap filament to blue and print that. The red can still be done separately and fitted in after. You will need some knowledge or do some research about doing a filament swap. My failures were due to my old printer playing up, so I need to finish building the other 2 I have 90% done or to buy a new one as I suffer from chronic laziness lol

This was just me Richarding around with tracing bitmaps etc so dont be surprised if things aren't as they should be.

Download the stls here:-

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0jcx54gik615kcc/Nasa_STL.zip?dl=0 
A hole drilled in the centre could mean you could fit a clock mechanism.

4. Turntable Stand - Tripod - Completed

Finally its done and I'm very happy with it ;-D

Some thoughts on making it:-
1. Print time for the stand tripod about 9 hour + depending on your settings.
2. The leg holder is about 1.5 hours, depending on your settings.
3. Sanding the nuts on the front and back helps getting them to fit (for me) sanding two edges also helped.
4. The other pieces, like both Turntables, are documented in previous blog posts.

Stl files for this build :-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9vxr56qkfgxcd9/Turntable_Stand_Leg%20Clamp.zip?dl=0

Link to the blog post about the Turntable builds 1 of 7
http://lukethier.blogspot.com/2018/05/desinging-and-making-turntable-for.html
Files for the Turntable themselves:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z26afzy1mpyvbql/2018_Turntable.zip?dl=0

Disassembled for storage.

Assembled

;-D Pretty pleased with myself (Pictures of me laying in bed with my arm around it smoking a cigarette are nothing but vicious rumors)

With the legs withdrawn in halfway so as to make the area needed by the base less

Next to the inspiration for this build

The start of some inception

3. Turntable Stand - Tripod

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9vxr56qkfgxcd9/Turntable_Stand_Leg%20Clamp.zip?dl=0

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I've been sharpening the bolts for holding everything in place.

It isn't strictly necessary, but I'm using plain bolts without any handle or mean to easily turn them if you know what I mean.

There were some M6 bolts that had a wing nut fixed to the head that would have been perfect for these but alas my local hardware store only stocked the 50mm long ones and I didn't want them protruding out too much so I stuck with 25mm long bolts.

So if you can get you hands on them or find something similar then even better, you could cut them down to length I guess.
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Hardware Bom
5 of M6 x 25mm bolts
5 of M6 x Nuts
1 x 2M x 22mm dowel cut to 3 x 400mm, 1 x 800mm
or an old broom handle cut to suit just make everything shorter if necessary

You shouldn't need much more than 20/30% infill (My tests used 10%) and they are fine, but knock yourself out.

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Put the nut on the bolt prior to grinding a sharp point onto the bolt. This will keep it steady in the drill chuck, but most of all it will re cut the thread when you remove the nut allowing you get the nut back on afterwards.

My drill and Aldi Dremel tool that I used for this.

Tada!!

I use a diamond cut off wheel for this but the normal discs that come with these tools are fine for this.

It doesn't need to be really sharp, the idea is to get it to penetrate the timber easier. Making using your hand to tighten it enough, rather than having to crank on it with a wrench of any description.

The nut took some effort to remove by hand but this was it; just re-cutting the thread all that grinding closed off and the nut now goes on and off by hand without any trouble.