Friday, September 30, 2011

"Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap: Building an Enclosure, First Steps


Slowly but surely I'm putting together a box to house the "Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap machine. The enclosure will have a nesting top secured along the bottom with 20 #6 screws and custom designed (and printed on the "Hains") nut holders. There will be a windowed door on the front with a lock to keep idle hands off it until they can be properly trained. I'm thinking slim windows on the right and left, and a 9" square window in the back. It's all MDF except for the 1" hardwood square dowel used in the frame of the base. The back will have an access port for the power supply, probably with a printed faceplate, and there will be a special on/off switch inside the enclosure. For special effects I'm going to mount some PC lights inside and give it that cool, modded computer look. The finish will be ultra gloss black.


Ran into a bit of a problem last night as I discovered that I'd glued on the wrong trim piece. Had to chisel it off, and I'd done such a good job laminating it to the other wood that it was like carving off a solid hunk of wood -- very hard to do. I did eventually manage to get it reasonably close to normal again and attached the correct piece of trim. I can really only add one piece at a time so it'll be three more days until I get the base finished and can move on to the top.

1 comment:

raster said...

Very cool... I've been searching around and have found very few RepRaps with enclosures. Good to see someone tackling this issue.