Retro Game Controller

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

This is a 3D printed Retro Style Game Controller Box for the Raspberry Pi. This was designed for smaller 3D printers (less than 200cm build plate) and to be 3D printed without having to use 'supports'. I also designed it so that there wasn't any external fasteners (like a snap together model) other than screw holes to screw in the Raspberry Pi, speaker and joystick.

I also designed this for use with the Arcade Bonnet from Adafruit. I did this so I could have sound from the arcade controller and not the display device (T.V., Monitor, LED panels, etc..). Also designed so I could use Arcade style buttons (30mm) and to utilize an actual joystick instead of a small 2 axis thumb type joystick. Some games just need the real thing!

Unfortunately the depth of the joystick and the buttons bumped up against the speaker and Raspberry Pi (with the arcade bonnet) forced me to raise the height of the box, so that's why its so tall. The buttons would short out against the arcade bonnet and kept rebooting.

The speaker's mounts was purposely split across the two main bodies to help keep the two halves of the controller box together.

The design was done in SolidWorks and was fun and challenging! I learned many new tools and tricks available within SolidWorks to help me achieve this design.

Notes and Printer settings:
I did this in PLA so it was designed for very little flexibility. Tolerances are tight ~approx. .5mm. Careful on printing the vertical column locks, if the heatbed is too hot you'll experience "elephant foot" and the locks will be very tight (not necessarily a bad thing but shouldn't be so tight that you need pliers to get apart). I had a tough time with the horizontal locks due to gravity. I incorporated a slight arch in the receptacles. At the time I was using Cura 21.08 and those locks fit tight! I've downloaded Cura 2.26 and that software actually seems to keep to the tolerances slightly better, my horizontal locks were slightly loose when printing with that version. If printing with PLA I recommend setting the build plate temperature to 55C and part removal of 50C. 60C makes it awfully tough to remove the big parts with lots of surface area. I've had excellent results with 55/50.