Looking for advice on a case for a Teensy 4.0 lockable (metal vs 3D printed?)

[jasoninlv]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for adding me to the FORM
I’m looking for some guidance on designing or sourcing a enclosure for a Teensy 4.0 lockable

My initial thought was to go 3D-printed, but a lot of the examples
I’ve seen don’t look very polished or durable.
I reached out to Polycase, but unfortunately they don’t do true custom enclosures.

Ideally, I’d love something that looks clean and professional possibly a metal enclosure
but I’m a bit concerned about heat dissipation and whether that’s a bad idea for the Teensy 4.0 without active cooling or venting.

Has anyone here:

• Designed a clean, professional case for a Teensy?
• Have CAD Files on Teensy 4.0 lockable so I can try to have one printed or get a quote
• Used aluminum or steel enclosures successfully? how do you all mount it in the case
• Found a manufacturer that does small-batch custom or semi-custom cases?
• Solved locking/tamper-resistant designs in a clean way?

Any suggestions, examples, vendors, or “don’t do this” lessons would be hugely appreciated. I’m open to hybrid ideas too (metal shell + internal printed frame, etc.).


Thanks in advance — really appreciate any direction you can point me in. also

 

[Paul Hesketh]

Hello there - yup, enclosures are always an issue, and can be shockingly expensive to have made. As a hobbyist, ie one offs - I started wanting to use aluminium enclosures, and Breeze Audio (through aliexpress) used to offer a cut out service. Here's an example in aluminium from a teensy 3.2 kush eq controller I made a few years ago, this cost around £60 at the time to have the cutouts made in the front panel. The graphics are home inkjet printed, on adhesive film. I had a 24hp 2mm aluminium front panel made at Meface ltd, and that came in at around £50, but that also included some high quality surface printing. Was very nice indeed, to be honest. Not sure what you mean by enclosure specifically for teensy lockable, though, you'll need more than just the uc floating in air.

I now just home 3d print enclosures as required, and mount everything on 100x160mm eurocards onto a backplane. Biggest don't for me is not having enough room - the "doepfer" eurorack (based on the smaller eurocard) size of100x80mm simply isn't deep enough for me to get my fingers in, and allow sufficient room for things like LED button switches and optical rotary encoders to mount at the front. So, I opted for a deeper card, and use DIN 41612 connectors on the backplane - this has 96 pins, so can basically break out every pin, and leave room for some future expansion Here's some photos of a "carrier" eurocard I had made from JLC for a teensy 4.1, these came in at around £10 each for the bare board. Can't seem to upload STL files here, so I took a jpg of the enclosures STL's to show the idea, and a photo of a module in that size(16hp). There are 4 components - a base/top with card guide, pcb mount holes and front panel mount holes, a front panel, a rear panel, and a side panel, that fits into grooves in the base/top for extra rigidity. Similar (a bit) to the schroff cassette enclosures, and easy enough to knock up in different hp widths. 10 M2.5 nuts and bolts to hold it together - 4 for the front panel, 4 for the rear, 2 for the PCB. I've tried, with some limited success, to cut 2mm thick aluminium panels myself, with my 4030 cnc - using a single flute bit, and cutting depth very low, 0.1mm per pass, but its a painfully slow process. Steel you can basically forget about - its cheap, but without some seriously expensive tooling, next to impossible to cut quickly and cleanly. Your tools will cry I've never had any issue with heat, but I don't use anything too outrageous in the enclosures. As for tampering, I highly doubt you can have an enclosure made that someone else couldn't get into, unless you basically welded it shut afterwards. Possibly use torx/anti-tamper security screws? I'd be more inclined to think about what it is you don't wany others to have access to, really. There are certainly more exacting engineering standards and certifications that apply to commercially released electronics rather than hobbyists, even on enclosures, for eg RF interference, recyling, etc. I do remember reading an article some years ago from a British HiFi company, that reckoned more than half of their cost of manufacture came from the enclosures.

For commercial use, a very quick search found a sizeable number of companies that will custom make panels/enclosures, they're just not cheap, and of course, will depend on where in the world you're based. Postage has started to get very expensive internationally. Using "off the shelf" sizings and mounts will cut costs considerably, though. Welcome to the world of teensy

P.