TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer Raspberry Pi (B+, 2B, 3B) Case

thingiverse

This is a Raspberry Pi case shaped like the original Tandy CoCo. The astute reader will notice that the keyboard has been upgraded. ;) The model is slightly cartoonish, but it came out decent and the ports are all pretty much where you'd expect them if you've seen a Color Computer. Card slot on the right side, video/audio/power in the back. There are some extra cutouts on the left for the USB and network ports as well. I made this based on a suggestion in the Color Computer Facebook group that it was too easy to find cases shaped like other classic systems and not easy enough to find one shaped like a CoCo. Problem solved. This fits my Raspberry Pi B+. Google tells me it should also fit the 2B and 3B. There should be enough room in the case for a small heatsink if you need it. Print Settings Printer: Monoprice Maker Architect Rafts: No Supports: No Infill: Probably doesn't matter. I used 10%. Notes: The .stl files used to be 1.065x larger than the OpenSCAD source. This was the scaling I had to use on the last project I made to get the final product to come out the right size. I've saled them back down because I've found that the Makerbot (which is pretty much a de-facto standard) prints them at roughly the original size. Be careful. You may still need to resize it to fit. The Raspberry Pi board should fit horizontally in the box, exactly. You will not need to flex the board. It will then have just enough room to slide right into the back of the case. You'll need to tilt it, and you may need to wiggle it vertically a bit in order to get the board to lock into place between the stand-off and the pin pieces in the back of the case. The headphone jack fits exactly into its port on mine, and the rest are very close too. Supports are built in where needed, and rafts are probably more trouble than they're worth here. There are a number of different pieces available here in case you want to print the keys or the keyboard frame in a different color. If not, the print is very easy. You can just print the box and the lid piece with the built-in keyboard. This comes out very clean. Post-Printing You'll need to probably use some needle-nose pliers and a file or a knife to remove the built-in supports. Pull them out from between the vents, and out of the side ports on the box. If you've printed the keyboard holder without the keyboard in it, there will be a few small ones in the front/top of that piece. Also on my printer, I need to clip a small disk that forms when the lid is started. If the disk isn't clipped off, the lid doesn't fit properly. How I Designed This This was an interesting model. It's complicated enough that I thought the easy way would be to model the entire system at once. Once that was done I built a stand-in model for the Raspberry Pi and used the OpenSCAD difference() function to hollow-out a Pi-shaped chamber, complete with ports in the correct spots and so on. I added some padding around the board except for where the case stand-offs were supposed to land. This left me with a hollow CoCo-shaped model into which a Pi should fit. After that, there's the matter of getting the board into the case. I decided that it would be best to be able to slide it in from the front. The keyboard facade seemed like a good place. I made a small cube which, when used with difference() would punch out a door in the front of the case. I thought that I'd just use intersection() to get the keyboard piece that was punched out. This worked fine, but when printed it was too tight a fit. I ended up taking the intersection() with a cube that was slightly smaller in two dimensions in order to make it work. The final thing was just to add some spherical tabs to hold the keyboard piece in. The finished product is such that the Pi slides in and out of the case. Once it's snapped together, it's held in place by the lid, the back ports, and the fittings inside of the case.