3D Printed PK2 Case

The final print of my PK2 case using my new Davinci 3D printer worked good. I now have a stack of failures in my lab to get to this point but many of them were my own mistakes. I used TinkerCad for the design. I did a final print of the cover at 0.1 height and 90% fill. I didn't have a lot of success with this in previous prints but this time it came out good. I've found that the placement of the design on the heated bed affects the results. Since the top of the box is the bottom of the print, the heated bed had a huge affect.

The side snaps needed a little trimming with an Exacto knife to get rid of the extra plastic, but that was expected as I didn't design in any support for the over-hanging wedge on the top walls. The plastic sags without support and then cools off in that sag position. A simple slice with the Exacto cleaned it up.

I gave up on putting the elproducts.com name on the case top because it was unreadable. I even tried it as a cutout like the PK2 but it needed to be too big for the Davinci to print it readable. The case makes a nice package if you don't want to use a bare board design. I'm going to add the .stl files to my PICkit 2 page so anybody can print them. This makes a nice project for an electronics class. Build the board and then print the case. In the end you have a useful project. Use it with the free Great Cow Basic compiler and you can be programing PICs in no time.


Note: The Davinci 3D printer went is now $529 vs the original $499 at Amazon.com. Demand drove it up apparently. And they are out of stock again. I'm told that MicroCenter will carry them so if you have one of those stores near you check it out.
If you buy one through the link in the upper right on this blog, I get a small royalty so if you like what I write consider clicking there first.