Eclipse Lamp Devlog #11 - Finishing the Bottom Lamp Case print and assembling the Servo and Pi to it. Also Finishing the B.O.M.

Today was pretty fun since I got to work mostly on the hardware. I started my print at 8 AM (the earliest I’ve woken up this summer) and let the 6-hour print run. I came back at 2:13 to see the final product. Since this was the bottom shell, I needed to print it in a dark color so light wouldn’t shine through. I was itching to use my new red-and-black silk PLA, so I loaded it into my extruder and got started.

Next, I was ready to hot glue the servo into the walls I designed, but first I needed to make sure the servo shaft was centered. I grabbed a 150 × 150 mm plate and used a compass and ruler to find the midpoint (shoutout to my geometry teacher). I found that the servo shaft was only 2 mm off-center, which I was totally fine with.

After that, I tried fitting the Raspberry Pi into its spot but realized I had made a CAD mistake. When I aligned it with the screw holes, the audio jack stuck out because I hadn’t designed an opening for it. Instead of reprinting the whole part, I grabbed my hot glue gun and burned a hole through the side. It worked perfectly, and the Pi fit right in.

I originally wanted to screw the Pi in place, but I didn’t have the right size hardware. I needed 3.5 mm screws and only had 3 mm and 4 mm, so I ended up hot gluing it in instead, and it held perfectly. I also hot glued the camera into its enclosure so it became part of the iris mechanism.

After finishing the hardware, I started and finished the BOM and posted it to my GitHub. The next step is printing the top case.