Anet A8 Electrical Box Alternate by kpurintun

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

UPDATE 3/23/18: See: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2839128
This remix has been remixed from scratch. I have fixed a number of things and added a PiZero side car.
This is my first real “3D printed anything” that I had something to do with, so proceed with caution. I am not buying you replacement filament if this doesn’t work……
First off, all the credit for the brilliant ideas go to feenix82. The layout, cable management, measurements are all his. I chose to remix this because my printer or settings or me struggled to get the venting to work right. While I was in there, I made the walls higher in hopes that I can make a flat cover rather than a cover with walls. I also added some uprights to the side tabs, and added some pretty filleting that I might regret.
I will eventually post the source files which I had to make from scratch. I basically imported the mesh (which imported huge and not to the right scale) then I traced it for the measurements and layout. After I discovered the scaling issue… after I spent an hour or so tracing... I re-scaled it. The cable management I redid with patterns because it would have taken a week to do that manually. The vents were also completed manually. I got a bit OCD about symmetry. so, I made some changes to the vents.
UPDATE: lots of little tweaks.
-added 40mm side fan
-added some fillets to the cable management for strength
-reduced the depth of the cover holes because they didn't need to be 50mm deep.
-raised the posts for the main board by 5mm to help with some clearances for the power input of the main board. (seems like there may be some conflicts)
-had microscopic gaps between the top parts of the cable management loops.
raised the side walls to be 51mm total. hope that clears the heat sinks on the external mosfets. I also stretched the vent holes to match this adjustment.
-left version 1 in there in case someone wants the old version
Edit: V2 had a mistake in the port holes. When I raised the main board, I did not raise the USB and SD card openings.
UPDATE 020518: Had some issues with printing. I actually think this was a combination of print settings and suspect PLA.. The issues I had were with the circuit board posts. These were being made in a flimsy way. Seems when it is being sliced, it will do one layer of the wall for each post then return for another layer. This means it needs to start and stop dropping its bead of filament. Since I have not figured out a super elegant way of making this work well. I linked some posts together to try to force it to do what I want.
note about the cable management... I did find that if I sent the supports overhang to 88*, that it spans the gaps successfully without supports. This will be much easier to crack out the supports.
UPDATE 021118: Had lots of trouble with the cable loops. So i modified the drawing to loose the loops, and add holes in the place instead. there is also a bracket that will click into these loops. my thought was that printing these later would speed up the print, reduce retractions, and also allow me to print those horizontally rather than vertically so that they print stronger. i could also print them in a different color which might be cool.
I will be working on the top cover soon, but wanted to get to a proper test print first. because the box is deeper, the cover can be made simply flat. should make printing easier. i also have a fan on the side, so i will not make a fan for the front.
UPDATE 021318: Was able to successfully print. Super pleased with the outcome. The cable clips glued in with CA glue very nicely. plenty of room for the cables. Will post a cover soon.
Print cover face up with supports. Use "cover1" if you have trouble printing small holes.