Cricut Expressions 2 Display Hole Cover

thingiverse

I scored a fantastic deal on an old Cricut Expressions 2 vinyl cutter with one major drawback - it was seriously damaged, rendering it unable to cut out custom designs, only allowing the pre-programmed designs sold by Cricut. So I ripped out its brain and display. The display hole is now covered with this clever object. Originally, I designed it with clips on all four sides but ran into a problem installing them without snapping them along one edge. I revised the design to feature clips on three sides, but if you try to remove the cover once inserted, you'll likely snap the clips along another side (trust me, I know firsthand). Despite this, the device still functions perfectly with two sides of clips. The design was printed in the specified orientation, complete with full supports generated by Cura and a pause at 2mm to switch filaments. All settings are parametric, making it easy to modify the design if needed. To replace the controller, I installed this ESP32-based control board: https://www.tindie.com/products/33366583/grblesp32-cnc-development-board/. To mount it in the Cricut, I used this convenient adapter available at: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3224607. You can find my detailed build log here: https://openbuilds.com/builds/cricut-expressions-2-to-esp32-grbl-control.7586/.