Casing's history¶
Here is the history of the casing used in this machine.
Six pieces box¶
The 'six pieces box' was my first idea and my first real casing design, in OpenSCAD:
I wanted a design without scaffolding, hence I opted to glue to pieces together.
The first prints resulted in six pieces that did not fit together:
After adding an air gap, the pieces fit together well enough to form a box:
I was happy I was able to create this box. However, I was unhappy with its design, as it involved too much glue and the glue available to me was not strong enough.
I realized that I can instead go for an open box design, where only a lid needs to be conneced to the box-except-lid. I decided to transition to this two pieces box design.
Two pieces box¶
Instead of glueing together the six pieces, I realized I could print 5 out of 6 pieces as one single piece without scaffolding.
I first tried to create such a two pieces box using Claude. It did not work out well:
Realizing Claude does not understand OpenSCAD well enough, I designed part of this design hand instead.
However, how to connect the lid?
I decided to start using a screw-on approach. Then, I realized, that I might as well make the clock spherical: it fits the theme better.
This is how I landed on the final design.
Sphere¶
A spherical design for a pi clock felt like a good fit. I wanted to have the sphere consists out of two half-spheres that can be screwed together.
First, I designed the screw, as I wanted to make sure that it could work:
The screw at the left did not work properly, with an air gap of 1 millimeter. The screw at the right had an air gap of 2 millimeter and worked great!
Then I printed my first sphere:
It worked great!
My first design had a structural weakness: the ring that connected the bolt with the outer sphere was too thin and needed scaffolding.
I decided to make both the bolt and nut to extend down/up the entire half-sphere, making it sturdier and reduce scaffolds.
The PCB fit the casing:
