Viki LCD v1.0 Makergear M2 Case by Neo_Usagi

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

While the Viki LCD v1.0 has been replaced with v2.0 they are still pretty useful and available on eBay. Some have suggested that they are a great bargain for folks wanting to add direct controls to your printer. So after putting this off for about a half year I got around to building a case for my MakerGear M2's Viki LCD. The mounts and dimensions are based on my MakerGear M2, which was made in 2013. I know MakerGear has been continually revising their printer since so I'm not sure if there have been significant changes in the position of mounts. But I made sure that the mounts line up perfectly with my printer.
The general design was inspired by whoDat's Viki enclosure (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:113083) and I've incorporated enough design elements to consider this a remix of that design but the overall dimensions, position of mounts, size of the case, and position and size of opening in general are quite different. I kept the rib design elements on the lid, which when I assembled my design, it became obvious the ribs were intended as lid reinforcements. I undermined this a bit by taking the opportunity to enhance ventilation by making openings in these design elements. Despite this, the lid remains pretty rigid and lets light from the RAMBo board through, which some might consider a nice benefit.
The case is designed to mount the Viki using M3 bolts and nuts. There are pockets for nuts to make assembly easy. The bolts and nuts used to mount the original RAMBo board case to the M2 can be used to mount this case.
I shrank the RAMBo portion of the case a bit (relative to the M2 case) and made three basic designs where the Viki enclosure is either aligned with the left, center or right of the RAMBo portion of the case. I've posted all three of these.
There are two variations on the Viki portion of the case. The extended version is a fully enclosed case. I often have wires and other conductors on my desk that can wriggle up into bare electronics and cause havoc so I felt it was a good idea to encase all of this. But for those willing to take the risk of having something shorting Viki circuitry, the flat bottom version is the one to print. The primary benefit of the flat bottom version is that needs a lot less (about 40%) less filament to print (significantly lower need for support).
Of the design options, I printed the centered, extended case for my own printer, which is a nice balance of solutions to design challenges. I've posted photos of how this version fits into the M2, including how it fits under the build platform when its completely lowered.