[Gta04-owner] 3D-Printed Cases

[John Ogness]

Hi Manuel,

On 2011-10-18, Manuel Dejonghe <manuel at dejonghe.de> wrote:
> I calculated what it would cost to print the parts on a professional
> 3D-Printer (Dimension Elite, http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/3dprinter)
> [...] would boil down to around 20 euro. This is a price for
> private, non commercial use available at the fablab in Aachen
> (http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/fablab).

Wow, that's quite affordable!

> Now the much cheaper (and more widely available) possibility would
> be the DIY 3D-Printing from the range of personal fabrication
> devices like Makerbot Cupcake CNC, Thing-O-Matic, UP!, Shapercube,
> RepMan, Ultimaker, RepRap, Mendel, Prusa Mendel etc. I happen to
> have one of the latter, and we just held a workshop (the second)
> here in Aachen where 10 of these were build in a weekend, that's why
> I am a bit versed in it.

Although I personally have no problems paying 20 EUR for a custom
case, I find the idea of DIY-printing very cool. Even if the quality
is reduced, with the low price people could really experiment on case
designs.

For example, I would love to have a case that can open and close very
easily and also make it easy to insert and remove the GTA04
board. This would allow me to quickly open up the case and take out
the GTA04 board to show people (students) the various chips and
possibly perform some hardware debugging with the board.

I have no experience with case designs or 3D printing, but I wanted to
express my excitement that others are interested in this. Maybe there
could be a place where users could post different case designs so that
people like me can choose what kind of case I want for my GTA04.

John Ogness