Raspberry Pi 3 Case and Hanger for Custom Heavy Duty Shelves

thingiverse

I have a set of heavy-duty custom shelves in my workshop/storage room where my printer sits, and I wanted to try setting up Octoprint on a Raspberry Pi 3 B. Hanging the Pi from the end of the shelf helps keep it out of the way. This includes a hanger that is a separate piece that goes on the shelf first and could be used for other purposes aside from hanging a case. My initial design attempt was to build a case that printed as a single piece, but I intended to insert an M600 command in the gcode to have my Prusa i3 pause when the case was mostly finished and then let the printer close it. However, I had some trouble with my Pis and wanted to be able to mess with them for now. The model of the case can be printed as a single job, but this bridges the entire top, which should generally work, but makes the interior of the case a little unattractive. The lid just sits on top and does not hold firmly in place. To make the bridging work with holes in the top, I came up with a design that employs what I'm calling "bridging rails." This is my own innovation, but I assume there's prior art for what seems ingenious to me. Anyway, Slic3r does not do anything intelligent with holes in a bridging layer and will happily extrude boundaries in mid-air. My solution to this is to add a couple layers of bridging rails on either side of cut-outs just before the final bridging layer. The result is not perfect, particularly for circular holes, but good enough for me. If it were for an object I looked at and handled often, I might not do it, but for a case that I essentially am hanging out of my way and forgetting about, it's fine. The final model includes a few small changes that I have not tested. I had trouble with my M2.5 screw/spacers being too tight, so I enlarged them slightly. The case I printed has less headroom, which gives me 2mm more room for the camera cable, but makes it a real pain to get the Pi in and out. I also made some adjustments to the bridging rails to hopefully make them print better. I also realize now that the micro-USB slot might be slightly off, but only very slightly, so be aware that you might need to snip the hole wider at the bottom or adjust the model, but I'm not sure about that adjustment yet so I'm not making it at this time.