Arduino Enclosures by Kai Franks

3D printing, laser cutting, and sewing. The three elements to building a foundation for the future of enclosures. Each enclosure made to fit an Arduino Uno that has a battery and a soldered light on it. The design of these enclosures were mainly inspired by stars and the night sky, something I am grateful to admire every night when the clouds give me the chance. Below is my design process for all three enclosures. Enjoy!

• Computer that can run OnShape
• Filament
• Wood
• Wooden Dowel
• Laser Cutter
• Fabric
• Sewing machine
• Arduino proto board with battery and led

To start off this project I needed to measure the thing I was making enclosures for, my Arduino. My Arduino started with the battery hanging off the edge of the board which made the measurements a little more difficult. I did measure around this as the length of the board overall. This led to some issues when designing the board because it added a tiny amount that I needed to account for that was hard to measure. I decided after my first 3D print to unsolder my Arduino and move the battery within the board. I also measured the distance my button was from each end in order to plan out where to put the hole for my button in the models.

In terms of 3D modeling, I took the measurements from my notebook and made a little box that would act as my Arduino. For each of my models I would design around this box so I can keep a consistent size. This worked for the most part. The only thing I didn't consider and plan well for was tolerance and the size of the print.

1. Flower: The flower that took 6 hours to print even on low infill and it didn’t have enough tolerance for the Arduino. The idea was to have a top piece that clicks in but it didn't feel worth it.
2. Deer in the headlights: The car that would have the light come out of the headlights but that one ended up having too much tolerance! This was much smaller and took less time though.

Stars in my shoebox: For my final box I decided to make a small shoe box like print that had three stars cut out from the top and a moon as the button. This box was very tight but it had enough tolerance for the Arduino to be able to come out. I took my original measurements and added I think 2-3mm to all measurements. For the cap/top of the box I offset the original rectangles in order to make a lid that could snap over the bottom part of the box.

Thankfully I only had to make one iteration of this enclosure. I made this only using OnShape which was not as hard as I though it was going to be. At first I did mess up the spacing of the tabs that click together and then got some reference from MakerCase and figured out how I need to think about designing each piece. Also I used illustrator for the engraving on the top. For the button in this enclosure I used a small wooden dowel and added a circle of hot glue in order to make sure it hits the button on the Arduino every time. The box was wood glued in order to keep it together but the top was left unglued in order to put the Arduino in.

For the sewing I started with making a normal pocket. When I tried to fold it out the sides I sewed started to rip apart. I came back to sew it again but I made sure to sew not as close to the edges. I also decided not to fold it inside out because that's how it ripped the first time. I also wanted to keep the star theme going to I fabric glued a start I cut out onto the pocket. I noticed the led was trapped in the pocket so I thought it would be a good idea to make a little hole for the led to peak out of. The last part was the button which was hidden under the pocket fabric. To fix this I fabric glued a small piece of fabric right below the star onto the place where the button sits on the Arduino.