Hey, thanks for taking the time to read this. I’d really like to DIY a 3D camera and need a housing. I’ll be putting 2 action cameras in there - these do become relatively warm if not outright hot. It’s important to note here that I will not be printing myself but ordering a print via 3dhubs (as much as I’d love to ‘pick up’ 3D printing, I have too many hobbies already…and not enough time) so I’m as green as it gets.
My question: assuming I use ABS because of its better heat resistance (vs. PLA), will a 0.5 centimeter thick wall (in a box shape) be rigid enough to (gently) use as a camera housing, or do I need to go thicker when designing my case?
Secondly, how ‘tightly’ can I design the housing - is there any warping when printing 5mm thick walls?
You can also look into other materials such as PETG - this has a better “resistance” to temperature than PLA and is more flexible so won’t be inclined to fracture or break. But if your cameras are getting up to and above 70°C you need to get them fixed!! That’s hot for external parts of consumer cameras to get too!
Ditto the wall thickness - i’d advise higher than 0.8mm thickness.
Have you also checked out Thingiverse for this - there are a lot of action camera mounts available to download already. May save you time in designing one? Or you can use an existing one and amend it to work with two cameras?
-If you end up designing a new case, vent holes go a long way in cooling devices. Fusion 360 (or any other cad like tool) will allow you to sketch up a model of your camera after taking a few measurements with some digital calipers. With that you can start designing your case around 2 of those models. Be sure to add some “wiggle” room (typically by adding .2mm - .6mm of spacing between the wall and your cameras) as the printer will always operate withing certain tolerances. -As for shell wall thickness, you must use multiples of the printer’s nozzle width. (0.4mm being the most common) Regardless .5mm is very thin. You should consider ,8mm or more. -Lastly PLA should be fine for housing digital electronics. Warping/melting of PLA is only a concern when you’re exposing it to temperatures like the inside of a car on a sunny day or the heat near a high current drawing device such as a printer’s hotend or a motor. Hope this helps.
Thanks, especially for the header regarding the wiggle room!
I’ll have to check the body temperature of these small 4K action cameras. They do go very, very warm, simply through there not being that much material to act as a heatsink relative to the amount of data being thrown around.
To be sure, not half a millimeter of wall thickness - half a centimeter, all of 5 mm!! It doesn’t have to be the smallest it can be. I want it to be sturdy and effective and am hoping 5 millimeter will be sturdy enough.
I’ve done exactly what you’ve described - measured my action cam with a caliper, “copied” it into Tinkercad, and am now designing a case around two of those. Halfway there! (I’m aware Tinkercad is more than likely child’s play for people “in the know” but it seems to be serving my needs well - for now.)
Thanks Jason - Finally decided to jump back in to F360 - it’s changed a little since I last looked! I would highly recommend Lars Christensen on YouTube - just gone through a couple of his tutorial series and they have sparked my interest back up! Looking forward to getting some fillets back in my life!
