Bezels for Arduino Logics
I’ve been toying with getting a second droid up and running for a while, and I recently picked up a styrene dome – it needing some blinky lights, so I ordered some parts to make a set of the new Arduino logics designed by teeces.
The boards from the fab house came in over the weekend and was anxious to make a start assembling them, but some components haven’t arrived yet, so I decided to make a start on making the bezels.
The LED spacing is a little different to previous logics so I had to create a new hole template. I also added mounting holes to match Dave Shaw’s aluminum surrounds.
I pasted copies to some scrap ABS and drilled out the holes free hand on my drill press. Once I’m happy with the layout I’ll probably make some in acrylic.
Fit was pretty good, and the holes were almost straight – I dont think you need to be super detailed with this piece as the original fibre-optics didn’t align very well anyway.I will also need to add spacers to hold the LEDs away from the the surrounds when mounted.
Some issues: The boards are super compact and cram a lot in, and as they stand there’s no space for mounting holes. They also extend over holes used to mount the alu surrounds to the dome, which isn’t perfect. I’m not sure if I’ll work around the problem or rejig the design and get some more made that are a little bigger with room for mounting holes.
Posted by Chris on April 6th, 2011 in Dome, Electronics | 7 Comments
Samurai remarks on April 7th, 2011 at 5:52 am
I saw those issues with that design. I like Ben’s old design and piggyback a secondary board behing the main one.
Chris remarks on April 7th, 2011 at 8:37 am
I even went as far as pointing it out in the original thread, but the answer was that he’s trying to keep the cost down because of price breaks on certain sized boards. I think it’s still usable and I have some ideas, but a tweaked board is still the best answer I think.
Chris B. Behrens remarks on April 7th, 2011 at 7:26 am
I’m working on the electronics for that now…are you interesting in selling a bezel?
Chris remarks on April 7th, 2011 at 8:39 am
Not right now, as they’re not perfect. Good enough for me, but people have become used to precision computer cut parts 🙂
I’ll let you know if something changes.
Samurai remarks on April 7th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Yea I saw that you pointed that out. Doesn’t help to save money on the board if it isn’t usable. I am working on my own board myself. You just have to have mounting holes.
Chris B. Behrens remarks on April 8th, 2011 at 10:32 am
This may be an embarrassingly elementary question…but, the bezel is black ABS, right? And where can you get that? What have you found is roughly the right thickness for it?
Chris remarks on April 8th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Yes, I cut them out of some scrap black ABS I had to hand. I think it was 3/32″ but I could be wrong. Thicker maybe better, but not too thick as it will be harder to drill. You will also need some sort of spacer between the board and the bezel to keep the LEDs flush with the bezel.
People also cut them from Acrylic, but it can be difficult because the plastic is so brittle, and I think it’s virtually impossible to drill by hand over 200 holes without it going wrong. This part is often laser cut, and someone offers them to the group for not a lot of money, but he’s hard to get a hold of sometimes – and it’s pretty easy to drill them yourself in ABS.