Case for LCR-T4 Tester

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

I started to design a case for my LCR-T4 meter. Of course, after taking measurments, visualizing and making a couple of hand drawings, I though, "Why not check Thingiverse? I can't be the only one with one of these neat little gadgets."
After a pretty quick search, I found one that was pretty close to what I was designing. The biggest differences were the battery placement (I was thinking below the meter, rather than above), and the numbers to remind what the spaces on the ZIF socket connected to.
So, I noted that some of the meters are a bit wider than others. When I opened the .stl files in tinkercad, they looked like they should fit. I printed the first version and found it was too narrow - the meter would not fit in the case. I guess that proves the old adage about measure twice, cut once -- except I didn't actually measure at all.
Next, I printed the wider version - This time, I just assumed that it should fit, since it was the wider version. Nope. Still too narrow.
So, 10 hours of printing and a few metres of filament later, I still didn't have a case that fit.
In both of the cases I printed, the screw holes lined up perfectly. After a bit of disassembly of the second print, I saw that the opening for the ZIF socket needed to move a little over a milimetre further from the centre.
This time, I measured, then I opended the stl files in Tinkercad, chopped them up into the parts I needed to move (lots of copying and using boxes to isolate the various pieces) then grouped them and printed.
I'm happy with the results and want to than egil for the original work that I built on: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:797733
NOTE: This will fit the narrower T4 testers, too.