Creality Ender 3 SD Card Extension/USB Connector Protector

cults3d

Background:

 I borrowed an Ender CR-3 from someone to make a custom Christmas light bracket for the top of my flagpole. He could not do it for me at the moment, as he was not living at home and had no place to set the printer up, but he offered to bring the machine over and set it up at my home. He taught me the very raw basics of what to do, and left the machine with me (haven’t seen or heard from him since the first week or so, but he specifically said I could keep it until he found someplace to live that he could set it up). In the meantime, I bought a CR 10 v2 for myself, and I’ve been doing a LOT of printing on both machines. I wanted to get started on ABS and other higher temp materials, so I recently built an enclosure for the CR-3 and started printing ABS, but the enclosure got so warm with the small space heater I have in it (runs at about 53ºC) that all the PLA printed mods that he had already made for his printer (filament guides, storage drawers, etc., and this something similar to this Thingie that I’m posting) started drooping or warping. So I started replacing the PLA parts with ABS parts, using the exact replacements when I could (almost all of them). While virtually all of them could be found here on Thingiverse, for this particular bit I could not find the exact replacement, so I had to reverse engineer the warped one to make the .stl. In the process, 

I did add the logo (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3078936), and the arch with the bed leveling reminder arrows (extruded using the one at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2670912). I also made the case a little thicker, as the old one was fairly flimsy. Additionally, I reinforced the bolt hole shafts (even more since the photos) with a square around each of them the full depth (now), because the shafts were too weak as just round tubes if pointed with the flat front face to the bed when printing (because the filament ran concentric rather than longitudinally does the tubes, so each layer was prone to breakage). I’d recommend at least 50% infill. I printed at 100% infill.

 This will take one of the standard USB card extenders. Loosely fold up the excess ribbon cable inside the cavity. It also has enough depth to cover the USB connector so it doesn’t get bumped out or bent or broken. There is a small slot on the left side to allow the USB cable to pass through. It bolts on using the two machine screw holes on the left frame piece, You’ll need 2 5mm x 12mm (minimum) hex machine bolts, as I thickened the bottom of the screw holes enough that the original 5mm x 8mm screws are not long enough to get a bite. Do not over-tighten!