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These days which forces me, as it does for all the others, to stay at home, I spend my time doing professional job. But that does not prevent me to care about my hobbies and , why not, to do some new experiences. In fact, I like to learn new things and experiment. At the end of 2018 I bought a 3D printer with which I printed some small platic objects. But it is not good to print objects designed by others; so I made up my mind and tryed to make a small and usefull object that then I 3D printed.

Raspberry Pi Zero W

The english foundation that produces the single board computer with a raspberry logo, Raspberry in fact, offers several solutions, including model Pi Zero W, a very small SBC with only 512Mbyte of RAM. Also in 2018 I bought one of these board but it has been since then without a cointaining case so, the first step I made has been to look for a ready-made case and 3D print it.

My Raspberry Pi Zero W kit: board and accessories

Sifting here and there I found one on Thingverse but, after printing it, I noticed its fragility: I was unable to close the lid, the box broke immediately.

Thingiverse case broken

3D desing

With Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD I started to design the little case, with these constraints:

- the case must have a lid

- the lid must engange in closing

- it is forbidden to use screws to lock the lid

- possibility to insert and remove Raspberry Pi without damaging the case

- case wall must be robust

- possibility to fix (e.g. to a wall) the case with screws

Having in my hands the drawing with board dimensions and getting mueasures with my caliper, I started to design the case, respecting the constraints. Here are shown 3D CAD pictures of desing I made: the board is fitted on bases with pivots that allow the board to remain in place.

The case desing

The design of the case with the lid open

On the top of the lid I've also drawn the Raspberry logo, permitting to the air to pass through the slot and cooling Pi Zero W. I've also made the pre-fracturing track: it must be broken if it is neede to access to the 40 pin strip connector.

Lid details

The lid has a couple of protrusions on each long side and the lower body has seats able to accommodate those protrusions, thus creating the joint. In addition, in the lower part of the box, I made two holes that allow you to push the card upwards with your thumbs, to extract it. In addition, the side walls have windows for accessing the connectors on the board.

The lower body of the case, with the extracting holes

Let's print it!

Then I generated STL files to be given to the 3D printer; the following pictures show the PLA prints I made. Parts are small, a little time is needed to obtain them: with my Creality CR-10s, using 40% of infill, the lid takes 53 minutes to be printed and the lower body 1h and 29 min.