What Is New

24.09.2023

SKR 3 EZ version added

What Is This

This is a rear mounted case for Ender 3 Pro. It can contain the motherboard, a Raspberry Pi 4, 2x buck converters and 2x 40mm fans for the Raspberry Pi and the motherboard (v060 is compatible with original ender 3 board and SKR Mini E3 and v061 is compatible with SKR 3 EZ).

Design

Micheal from Teaching Tech had a very nice design. But it didn't fit perfectly to my printer and to be honest I didn't like it. So I decided to design my own.

My case is designed to use nearly all the available space on the rear of the Ender 3 Pro, which was required to give enough space for the fans and the cables. Lids are held in place with magnets, which makes it super easy to open and close the case. All the vertical walls have hexagonal holes to maximize the air flow, it can accomodate 2 different types of buck converters and different motherboards, have enough gap for the thick Sprite Extruder /Pro cable.

I have been using mine for the last 8 months or so and I'm super happy with it, and along the way I had quite a bit of an upgrade and I modified the design accordingly.

It has big enough holes to fit the tick Sprite Extruder (Pro) ribbon cable. Around the case there are 10 gaps between the body and the lid to pass the cables as required. There embedded gaps for 5x2mm magnets on the body and the lids, and you can basicaly use color change (M600) with your slicer to stop the print at a certain height and implant magnets.

Both lids contain mount points and air ventilation gap for 40 mm fans.

Mainboard

All the original Creality boards (1.1.4 / 1.1.5 / 4.2.2 / 4.2.7) and SKR Mini E3 (v1 / v2 / v3) and SKR 3 EZ (v061) are supported. There is a sligth difference between the Creality and SKR boards on the SDCard position, this model has the required tolerances.

Raspberry Pi 4

Only the Raspberry Pi 4 (Model B) is supported. You need to modify the model to support the older versions, which you can do it by the supplied FreeCAD file.

Buck Converters

There are mount points for 2 buck converters of two different dimensions. 99% of the available buck converters should fit, but if you need modification you can use the FreeCAD file.

Fans

Both lids contain mount points and air ventilation gap for 40 mm fans. Currently I'm using a 40x10 and a 40x20 Noctua fan.

Customization

I included the FreeCAD file, so that you can customize the model as you wish. You need to add the honeycomb_solid extension to be able to properly edit the file.

Printing

Even though, there is a better orientation to print the lids, to be able to implement the magnets a proper printing orientation should be used, especially for the lids. The right and left case are straigth forward to print, but needs adjustment so that unneeded support is not generated. I highly suggest using support blockers and enforcers.