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Measured Once

A project log for RetroRiter

A Pi Zero based desktop computer with attached thermal printer.

jamesJames 08/17/2016 at 11:450 Comments

I returned home one day to see a package from Ponoko at my door. Hastily I opened, and had a brief panic inducing moment:

Burn marks everywhere!

But once I peeled off the paper, everything looked fine. Really good in fact. I was worried that a few lines were too close (which can cause burning to the actual wood and not just the paper) but everything turned out great. The only problem with the laser cut was one engraved part wasn't quite dark enough for my tastes, losing some details. But that was on a few extra non-project related parts (spare tokens for a game... the five circles you can see above).

I popped everything off, peeled off the paper, and put everything together. I had two big concerns, but to my surprise, I had only made two(-ish) mistakes in my layout which were unrelated. Well, aside from not filling the entire cut area.

One worry was how I did the screw holes: I made tiny '+' marks to guide a drill instead of cutting a circular hole. This was done to save cutting time and thus money, but in the future I should actually see how much that would save. Unfortunately I only had drill bits and no drill (the bit and brace I have can't hold small diameter bits), so I had to turn the bits by hand. I have a few blisters now, but the wood was soft enough that this amazingly worked. A drill is on my wishlist. Anyways, here what the screw guides look like before and after "drilling":

I had also been worried about the thickness of the material (which is 3.2 +/- .3 mm) and how that would work with the LCD support brackets, one slot which you can see above. I made them slightly bigger than 3.2mm, and everything fit just fine. I'll have to shim / glue it for it to really be secure, but that's not a big deal.

My final mistake I'm not really counting, but it is something I need to fix in the .svg file: I placed the screw guides for the LCD base about 0.5 mm to far out. I just drilled the holes a bit wider and everything worked fine.

My time is up for now, sorry for the short update. Next: the first version of the completed case.

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