Home made Pi plate case

John has shared with us a DIY enclosure for his Raspberry Pi 3.

The sheet metal is from a small, .5mm thin, plate of aluminium obtained from Bunnings, and carefully cut and filed to size and shape without creating a bend in the plate (there is plenty of it left for further ideas). The top plate ended up being cut back to clear the top lips of the USB connectors rather than making the solution higher; which would have been difficult with the screws used. Small, thin, self-sticking rubber patches were stuck onto the bottoms of the screws to avoid scratching the surface the Pi rests on.

As an expression of paranoia about shorting the various through-hole elements, the top surface of the bottom plate is not painted, it is covered in two coats of black "Liquid Electrical Tape" from Jaycar Electronics to ensure the plate itself cannot contact any live wires. I had a can of flat black spray enamel for the other surfaces.

Most of the time this Pi is now running as a 24x7 pico-server, using a fast 32GB micro SD card for the OS and a 1TB USB drive for the data. It may not be all that fast, but following the last round of updates to Ubuntu 16.04, it is superbly reliable; and now my QNAP NAS is only started up to provide a RAID-protected backup location!

enjoy
John.

We really like the simplicity and elegance of this design.