Maker Pi Pico Travel Case

Salutations fellow makers! My name is Tyler Erwin and I'm a fourth year Mechanical Engineering major out of San Jose State University and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers club. For the Back to School challenge this Fall, I wanted to design something that would help with one of the classes I'm taking this semester, ME 106 Fundamentals of Mechatronics Engineering. In this course, we utilize a Maker Pi Pico kit for our Raspberry Pi Pico we use in class and lab. When you receive this item from the class, it comes in a box that over time wears out and is unable to ideally secure the microcontroller. Thus, I embarked on the journey to design a box that would allow me to adequately store my microcontroller while also still having the functionality to be utilized while in the case.

In order to build the microcontroller case, I needed at least one spool of filament, five M3 screws, a little bit of super glue and 6 magnet squares that were 10 mm x 5 mm x 2 mm. I also needed the Maker Pi Pico and Raspberry Pi Pico in order to test the fitting of the case.

Cytron also provides the CAD file for their base on the resources section of their site so you can make your own case!

https://www.cytron.io/p-maker-pi-pico-base

When designing the case, numerous design choices came into play. First off, I wanted to be able to tightly secure the microcontroller from the case to prevent it from moving and affecting the wiring. I created 4 hole points for the M3 screws to secure the microcontroller in place. I also wanted a locking mechanism that wouldn't be difficult to release the top part of the case. At first I wanted to utilize 3 mm round magnets to match the dimensioning of the screws I was using, but I decided upon magnets which were already in the club room and square. I've left the original round magnet mounting points in the sketch in case anyone would like to print the part with the round magnets. I then utilized an online file of the Maker Pi Pico Base in order to design openings for the buttons to still be activated and the groves to be reached on the sides.

In order to make the top portion of the case, I duplicated the base model and repurposed the first base sketch to create the top initial piece. I used the Maker Pi Pico model to make a couple extra cut out for wiring to extrude from the GPIO pins, then printed them. I added the Raspberry Pi logo and the ASME logo to add some flavor to the case and labelled it in case it was showcased to someone unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. I added the top magnet inserts alongside the screw hole and I was ready to finish.

Once I finished the models, I utilized Fusion 360's easy export feature directly into Cura to slice my part and print on our club's Ender 3 printer. The print took 8 hours to print and 58 grams of filament. I then mounted the board to the case, glued the magnets to their inserts, and screwed in the top to the base. And the case is complete!

In the class this case is utilized in, there is a final project where our team is developing a robot that operates with mecanum wheels by utilizing the microcontroller and some sensors. My goal is to integrate this case in the final design in order to hold the microcontroller and further develop this project beyond just the case. We've also begun the configuration for a scissor jack on top of this robot to create a miniature electric vehicle charge bot (as shown above).