Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

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apk
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Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2016 3:06 am

Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

Post by apk » Thu Feb 04, 2016 3:41 pm

This is my first attempt at designing and printing a case from scratch. It took me a little over a day including printing both shells (total print time about 4 hours). It was a very good learning experience. The LCD display and temp/humidity sensors are from Phidgets, and they have both mechanical drawings and STEP files available for their boards. I decided to just use their mechanical drawings to mock up the boards as solid objects so I could use them to layout the case. As an experiment, I did the mock up in imperial dimensions (as that's how Phidgets supplies their drawings) and the case layout in metric dimensions (because that's what I've been using) with 123Design. That led to some interesting problems getting things to line up properly. I also experimented with printing some small (25mm) snap together cubes to test clearances on nesting parts, and settled on 0.1mm as a clearance. The result is not bad... but since I need a few of these I've got a number of improvement tweaks for the next version.
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sensor_case_with_cad2.jpg

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Jules
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Re: Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

Post by Jules » Thu Feb 04, 2016 4:06 pm

Great job on it! :D

jsc
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Re: Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

Post by jsc » Thu Feb 04, 2016 5:55 pm

If I could make a suggestion, check out Fusion 360. 123D Design is a great starter drug, but if you're going to be making things that you're going to want to tweak later, you'll want history-based parametric modeling. You can change a few dimensions, and given you've drawn your model properly with all the right constraints (a big if), everything will adjust appropriately instead of having to redraw everything from scratch. You can get a hobbyist license for free.

OnShape is also a similar system with a free tier.

apk
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2016 3:06 am

Re: Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

Post by apk » Thu Feb 04, 2016 6:11 pm

jsc wrote:If I could make a suggestion, check out Fusion 360. 123D Design is a great starter drug, but if you're going to be making things that you're going to want to tweak later, you'll want history-based parametric modeling. You can change a few dimensions, and given you've drawn your model properly with all the right constraints (a big if), everything will adjust appropriately instead of having to redraw everything from scratch. You can get a hobbyist license for free.

OnShape is also a similar system with a free tier.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm already seeing the limitations of 123D Design...

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sthone
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Re: Snap Together Case For LCD And Temp/Humidity Sensor

Post by sthone » Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:21 pm

Being able to go back and change things when designing something is the only way to go. That being said Onshape is pretty cool... (I've been using it more and more lately) but only if you don't mind sharing your designs as you work on them. You get very limited storage space (100megs) for private files (with the free account) so you can basically work on only one or two small private based projects. If you don't mind sharing though you get 5 gigs which is more than enough for a few things going on at once. Picking apart the things others have done is a good way to learn though so the public files aspect is pretty cool. I haven't done it but I think it allows you to collaborate on projects at the same time too. It's a web based program too so there's nothing to install and you can work on it from anywhere. (assuming you have a halfway decent computer and internet connection.) Of course if you get serious about things you can always pay the $1200 a year fee. :shock:
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