I’m designing an enclosure that will hold a raspberry pi, a charging circuit (from adafruit), and a battery pack. I plan to print using PLA. On the outside of the box, I plan to mount several LEDs, a PIR sensor, and a camera (somewhat heavier than the standard Pi camera, but still nothing heavy. It doesn’t need to be load bearing (I won’t put anything on top of it), but I do want something solid that will hold the parts.
I know that the answer will depend on the final box design, but what would a reasonable wall thickness be for this kind of box and what things should I keep in mind when trying to decide?
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Hi @travisbauer,
It is good practice to start with 2mm of wall thickness for FDM 3D printing. You can go slightly below but it will depend on the material/technology your are going to use for 3D printing. I would suggest you make the outer walls with 2mm thickness and if you have any compartments/separation inside you could decrease that to 1.5mm.
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Standard wall thickness for most plastic enclosures is typically 1.5mm, this should be more than sufficient for what you are looking for
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Considering you are printing in FDM and that such box has relatively “thin” walls, I think you should consider the nozzle diameter in this calculations.
In 90% of the printers the nozzle is 0.4 mm, this means that a structurally good and faster to print wall will be in 0.4 mm multiples. So starting form a safe minimum of 1.2 mm to a strong 2.4 mm. This way you will have just perimeters and no infill and I believe 1.6 or 2 mm to be good for the project, depending on how tall the walls are and how strong you want the wall.
If you choose for intermediate wall thicknesses, the slicer might opt for two solutions: try for an infill, that will waste printing time and make your machine shake like samba, or just leave a gap, making the wall actually weaker. One quite important step, if you can, is to check the nozzle path and make sure that, once you set the thickness (i.e. 1.6 or 2 mm), there is no infill or gaps. Every slicer is slightly different and you may need to modify the wall thickness/perimeters settings.
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Thanks to everyone for the replies. This is what i was looking for.
