Printing Portal has helped 100’s of customers achieve their needs and demands across a multitude of industries in the past year, one particular client required something special in less than a week in order to complete their product – so they came to Printing Portal for help.
BoiledWeb, an exciting web consultancy firm based in London, design and develop Internet of Things (IoT) products for their clients. Recently they were asked to create a tool which clocked people moving in and out of a building. Their speciality in software development quickly enabled them to create the required content, however on this occasion they needed a physical device to pick up data.
They purchased all the components and soldered together, however they quickly realised that:
The parts couldn’t fit into the housing very easily
The case looked ugly and bland. It really didn’t stand out or provide anything interesting
There was no slits to remove excess heat
Design & Production
Approaching Printing Portal, they asked if we could quickly design a case, matching the exact dimensions required to comfortably house their new parts and have a clean case with threads in under a week.
So we set off on the challenge – using the information provided we were able to import CAD models of the exact components used in real life – giving us sub millimetre accuracy! Modelling around these components, we produced a few variations of the casing in less than 2 days, one of which was used for the production run. BoiledWeb also asked us to incorporate their logo into the new design, so we imported vector files to finish the housing model in CAD.
Printing the case using a black resin at 100microns we inserted threads to complete the housing and screw the components in place – it all fits!!
BoiledWeb were able to showcase their new IoT device with a fantastic new housing that their client loved. It was cheap. It was fast. And it looked great! As Matthew from BoiledWeb states it “meant we don’t have to invest a large amount of cash up-front. For the first time we are now able to design and develop hardware in-house rather than finding a supplier who already does something similar and has opened the door to a new world of product development.” Matthew goes on to say “We can now develop web based products that are no longer tied to a PC and we can enter the world of Internet of Things (IoT) where we can produce low cost devices that use the internet. These devices are a game changer as we can make day to day tasks of businesses a lot more efficient and allows us to bring technology together under one common platform.”
3D Printing enclosures is something Printing Portal excels at. Turn arounds are extremely fast, the results are highly customised and far more attractive than a simple case, and you can design it around your components – no more cramming into unfit for purpose spaces.
With components and boards becoming ever more accessible and cheaper (think Arduino or Raspberry Pi) we can create the enclosures your electronics need!
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