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HW-4:
Enclosure
Enclosure
Before diving into ordering parts online (and facing the wrath of holiday shipping and its ensuing delays), I decide do to raid my house and the junk shelf for any parts that could be fun.
At home I found a water cooler that was going to be thrown out, and I was immediately drawn to the feel of toggling the on/off switch.
However, after unscrewing the kettle, I realized that that switch was part of a larger mechanism, connected to a far larger plastic component that ran down the handle. The switch alone actually wouldn't "flip". I ended up abandoning this piece 😟
I found another "cool" button from a hairdryer on the junk shelf that I wanted because it reminded me of the "Easy" button from Staples
I had fun prying it open after using a screwdriver to separate the plastic moldings.
The button has had a really nice satisfying click.
For the actual enclosure, I knew I wanted to laser cut acrylic for the control panel. However since I've already worked with it, I thought to work with cardboard because it was a new material, cheap, and most importantly, easily replaceable if I make a mistake (spoiler alert, I made many). I initially grabbed leftover tea boxes and Oreo boxes, but I realized their cardboard was too flimsy, so I ended up going with two FedEx boxes (one not pictured), and a free box my friend had. I really liked how small it is (I don't want to create giant enclosures) and how well it would fit my new parts: a black arcade button I had leftover from my PComp final, and an unused joystick component.
Unfortunately all the digital calipers were used, so I used a combination of an analog one and my tape measure to obtain the dimensions of each part. Naturally since the analog calipers was in 10ths of an inch, my lack of precision would cost me for 2 of the three parts.
My lasercut piece fit the push button well, but was slightly too large for the joystick because I didn't realize the plastic was malleable.
I tried melting down the plastic part on the "cool" button from the hairdryer, but it had an extra edge that I couldn't melt down because it would otherwise impede the ability to push the button down on the spring.
Since I needed to enlarge the hole for the "cool" button a bit, I initially went to the drill to create guide holes and then enlarge the original hole with the Dremel, but...I went back to the laser cutter because it was would be cleaner.
Another mistake I made was that I flipped the acrylic sheet over when trying to re-cut, and the ensuing snowman shape was cut out 😟.
Another bug/feature? was that didn't accommodate a way to remove/replace batteries/wires etc. I think the reason for this was that I both forgot and mentally since I approached this project as a fidget box that wasn't intended to have wiring.
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