Hi all!
I've recently been working on designing a case for the developers version of the breakout box for my own benefit and maybe as something to feature in my portfolio and thought I'd post what I've come up with.
My main aim with this was to produce a design that incorporated the existing board, was fully manufacturable and was to be used as a stationary dock to your TV/PC, allowing use of the GP2X as a home console once usb joypad drivers are implemented.
Before I get into things too much I'd like to point out that I don't actually own the breakout box, so some of my dimensions may be a little off, but it shouldn't be more that a mm here or there as I've been quite resourcefull in making do with the information that I had.
I'll talk about the technical aspects in a bit, but first a few pics:
In terms of functionality it's designed so that the GP2X battery housing sits in the indent at the back of the unit, locating the 2X onto the ext port connector. This holds the 2X at a 60 degree angle. In terms of visualising this, the 2X will hang over either side. This is something I first wanted to avoid, but was innevitable due to the layout of the board.
The shape of the board actually provided some headaches, as it's not ideally designed; the main problems being that the usb ports are not centered on the board and so it had to be mounted slightly to one side to centralise the ports. Other problems include that the phono sockets are not mounted off the board and consequently required a seperate housing within the case.
These kind of design shortsights have meant that I've had to adapt the board a little bit by cutting the corners off and cutting a slot out under where the phono sockets are located. AFAIK these mods don't affect the functions of the board and would certainly be easily implemented into a mass production scenario.
As the board is offset within the case, the RS232 port ended up within the case and so a slot had to be cut out to accomodate this:
In terms of mass production the design features full draft angles and is designed for injection moulding. To find any problems in the deisign I also ran a moldflow analysis:
This initial 'final design' produced two problems; namely unsuitable geometry for analysis and a result that suggested a problematic moldcycle with undesirable surface finish and structural problems. Using this I adapted the design (mainly the large ribbing you can see and the injection location) to produce this result:
You can see that the ribs have a section cut out to reduce the filltime. This should also not affect the design much structurally, so is an ideal solution. After this change the geometry error was gone and the analysis came back as an easily moldable design.
Here is a rendering of the top case half on it's own showing full details:
Right, so there it is. Personally I'm interested to see what GPH do with the BOB. I heard Craig say that they were planning on making it attach on the back maybe, personally I'd like to see a floor standing version, due to the need for external power (especially us MKI'ers ). Either way I'm curious to see whether they use the same curcuit board as the dev version, and if so, how they're going to get around the problems I've outlined. My guess is that they're going to need a new board.
Congratulations if you managed to read this far, I hope I didn't bore anyone too much. Any feedback is welcome, however I don't know if I'd implement any changes, as I'm using this model to produce a set of engineering drawings now. I'm also aware that the board is supposed to have a LED on it, but I couldn't see where... I think it's on the back.
Oh and for anyone who's interested I did this work mainly in SolidWorks and then used 3DStudio MAX for the rendering.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found some of this interesting.
PS.: There would have been a couple more images, but apparently I maxed out. :rolleyes:
I've recently been working on designing a case for the developers version of the breakout box for my own benefit and maybe as something to feature in my portfolio and thought I'd post what I've come up with.
My main aim with this was to produce a design that incorporated the existing board, was fully manufacturable and was to be used as a stationary dock to your TV/PC, allowing use of the GP2X as a home console once usb joypad drivers are implemented.
Before I get into things too much I'd like to point out that I don't actually own the breakout box, so some of my dimensions may be a little off, but it shouldn't be more that a mm here or there as I've been quite resourcefull in making do with the information that I had.
I'll talk about the technical aspects in a bit, but first a few pics:
In terms of functionality it's designed so that the GP2X battery housing sits in the indent at the back of the unit, locating the 2X onto the ext port connector. This holds the 2X at a 60 degree angle. In terms of visualising this, the 2X will hang over either side. This is something I first wanted to avoid, but was innevitable due to the layout of the board.
The shape of the board actually provided some headaches, as it's not ideally designed; the main problems being that the usb ports are not centered on the board and so it had to be mounted slightly to one side to centralise the ports. Other problems include that the phono sockets are not mounted off the board and consequently required a seperate housing within the case.
These kind of design shortsights have meant that I've had to adapt the board a little bit by cutting the corners off and cutting a slot out under where the phono sockets are located. AFAIK these mods don't affect the functions of the board and would certainly be easily implemented into a mass production scenario.
As the board is offset within the case, the RS232 port ended up within the case and so a slot had to be cut out to accomodate this:
In terms of mass production the design features full draft angles and is designed for injection moulding. To find any problems in the deisign I also ran a moldflow analysis:
This initial 'final design' produced two problems; namely unsuitable geometry for analysis and a result that suggested a problematic moldcycle with undesirable surface finish and structural problems. Using this I adapted the design (mainly the large ribbing you can see and the injection location) to produce this result:
You can see that the ribs have a section cut out to reduce the filltime. This should also not affect the design much structurally, so is an ideal solution. After this change the geometry error was gone and the analysis came back as an easily moldable design.
Here is a rendering of the top case half on it's own showing full details:
Right, so there it is. Personally I'm interested to see what GPH do with the BOB. I heard Craig say that they were planning on making it attach on the back maybe, personally I'd like to see a floor standing version, due to the need for external power (especially us MKI'ers
). Either way I'm curious to see whether they use the same curcuit board as the dev version, and if so, how they're going to get around the problems I've outlined. My guess is that they're going to need a new board. Congratulations if you managed to read this far, I hope I didn't bore anyone too much. Any feedback is welcome, however I don't know if I'd implement any changes, as I'm using this model to produce a set of engineering drawings now. I'm also aware that the board is supposed to have a LED on it, but I couldn't see where... I think it's on the back.
Oh and for anyone who's interested I did this work mainly in SolidWorks and then used 3DStudio MAX for the rendering.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found some of this interesting.
PS.: There would have been a couple more images, but apparently I maxed out. :rolleyes:
