Project Saturn (Daphnis) Enclosure

thingiverse

This drive enclosure was designed to achieve the specific goals of Project Saturn (Daphnis), namely: the highest storage density possible with passive (room temperature) cooling, de-coupling of the physical enclosure's scale-out architecture from any given controller product, and supporting a common enterprise drive bay model (hot-swap bay style). These design goals were also blended with a strong desire to 3D print as much of the solution as possible, to leverage smarter design decisions to remove the need to purchase additional fasteners or fittings. The enclosure begins with the rear plate which has been parametrically designed to fit the plug of a locally available [SATA cable](https://www.pclan.com.au/sata-22-pin-7-15-pin-m-to-f-cable-32cm-blue). If you were to source a different cable then the rear plate parameters are what you would need to customise to sufficiently hold the alternative plug header in place. The rear plate splits into two part (the rear top and rear bottom) to allow for insertion of plug header without force, and to fully encapsulate it. To ensure that the split rear plate holds the SATA plug in place sufficiently to sustain drive insertion/extraction forces, it is contained within the bottom and top plates. The front plate is the smallest viable structure to complete the enclosure as a strong and reliable drive bay. Overall this enclosure is strong, sleek, modern, has good air circulation and makes an excellent drive bay for virtually arbitrary scale-out / distributed storage architectures. Note that I have never had need, but if you find the print is not a tight fit (I've had to hammer the parts together in some cases, a mostly full bottle of Johnny Red works in a pinch), then the rear top and rear bottom, and top and bottom plates can be fastened with the matching clips (or a glue). I have also provided the 3MF files to simplify orientation on the print bed, including a single file with all of the components so that you can print an entire enclosure in one job.