Enclosure for Open.Theremin V3

thingiverse

This is my design enclosure for the electronic musical instrument Open.Theremin V3 (http://www.gaudi.ch/OpenTheremin/index.php/opentheremin-v3). Theremin is a very unusual musical instrument which has two antennae. Varying the distance of your left hand to the left antenna you change the volume of the sound, same for the right hand/antenna you change the pitch of the sound. One can by the soldered kit from the official link for ~100$; I chose to do it from scratch - by submitting the Gerber files to a Chinese PCB manufacturer, ordering all surface mount (SMD) parts from a local retailer (DigiKey in Canada), and doing my first ever SMD soldering project with a hot air soldering station, which saved me ~50$. I made the two antennae from a thin copper pipe used for plumbing under the sink, bending it with my hands. I covered the antennae with a heat-shrink black tubing, and used white ABS plastic to print the enclosure, so it looks pretty modern. There are already a few enclosures designs for Open.Theremin V3 available online. The one I designed is much bigger, sturdier, and heavier than a typical design. The purpose was to build something which is practical and convenient to use (can be used for musical performance). The total weight (with antennae, PCB etc) is ~550g. The project includes STL files, and the original (Fusion 360) files. Some of the STL parts are only used during designing, and should not be printed (model of PCB and the two antennae). You can use them to design your own Theremin enclosures. I used three kinds of wood screws for the design - 4 tiny ones for the PCB, lots of small ones to connect the two enclosure parts together, and a few bigger ones to be used internally for the antennae. I tried to provide a bit of spacing between the parts to account for 3D printing imperfections, but you'll likely need to use a file and sanding paper to get to a perfect fit. All the parts were printed with thick walls, tops and bottoms (2.4mm), for sturdier screw connections, using 20% infill. You might need to use some supports for the outer curved parts of the top and bottom parts; no support is needed for the insides of the theremin. You might need to modify the design slightly for your particular PCB and antennae.