Instead of doing a “slide on horizontal” design like I was originally thinking, where I’d have to find a way to deal with the buttons blocking such a maneuver, I found that a horizontal slice works out much better for 3D printing. I was still concerned about how I’d attach the thing, but it turns out the software I’m using has a feature which generates these little attachment pegs for you. I will try some tweaks, but it worked out pretty good and is actually enough to keep the case on alone.
You can see I “cheated” a little and only added these little spacer tabs on the edges to adjust the fit after the 1st try. A little extra spacing between the phone and the case might not be such a bad idea anyway. And maybe I will try a design which expands on that more drastically.
The cutouts could be a little fancier I guess but I was eager to see if I could finish something usable. 2nd try I got the fit perfect. I know the back looks kind of weird, but that’s actually intentional. It’s due to the type of plate it was printed on, but it produces a very agreeable texture. I also have the option of a perfectly smooth back but this is nicer.
I used mostly these flat angles because it’d look cooler. For the buttons it’s fine, but still not sure about the side edges. Rounded is certainly the more intuitive choice and might be nicer when holding the phone for a long time.
This case is definitely a thicc boi (intentionally). The original test print had an even thicker back, but I reduced it slightly for the 2nd try. You can see if you look close that I broke one of the pins taking it apart too fast. I’ll have to experiment with that a little.
It took a lot of time and work to make this, but I’m a little bit in shock at how close to a commercially mass produced product this turned out to be. I really hate the plastic waste that trial tests and failed prints creates, but I don’t think I’ll be stopping here. Way too many enhancement ideas to try… sorry environment.
Wow. Nice. My head started thinking of enhancement ideas too (or more like, variations and additional feature potentials), but the only thing that really caught my eye were the sharp outer corners - with that mass they will make a dent if the phone falls (then again, we’ve had the discussion before of using L5 for self defense ).
Can you add printing tech specs that you used here too: printer model, printing settings, used material, after printing process (if any) etc.
Yeah I haven’t been too concerned with the protection aspects of the case, for me it’s more about reducing the feeling of holding a hot phone (and it does help). But I should probably look into protections too, because who knows if I drop it some day. (I pretty much never drop phones.) I’ll definitely be reducing the sharpness for next iteration. I think the non rounded bezel on the bottom edges works fine, but I was forced to be a little sharper on the top due to the button cutouts. I’ll have to think about what to do about that.
I guess you mean that it’d make a dent in a floor? Haha, I guess it might. I did think about falls a little bit, and I wonder if the tabs that I have (3rd picture) might actually help protect the phone due to a slight gap between the phone and the case. The corner of the phone is also more rounded than the internal part of the case, so a corner hit would probably protect the phone brilliantly. Not so much your hardwood floor.
This was printed with a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon. The settings were all defaults! (Which is why these printers are popular I guess - this thing just works. Also keep in mind that 3D printing is new to me.) But if people need that info for other types of printers I think I could get specifics if I know what to look for. Layer height .2mm, 2 walls loops, 15% infill. Not sure what other settings are commonly sought after.
I did nothing at all after printing, this is how it came out. Material was just the PLA Basic that Bambu sells. I don’t know if a different material would be more suitable. I didn’t think I’d get an actual usable thing by the 2nd print!
I can promise that the final version’s going to look amazing. I have some cosmetic ideas that I’m totally excited about but I won’t put spoilers here just yet.
If you’re just printing drafts at this point, I suggest using more coarse settings to speed up printing and save environment. On the final ones you maybe can even increase infill a bit for more hardness (though, I wonder if making case intentionally brittle might actually make it safer for the phone: transfer of kinetic energy to case instead to phone - though, it depends on the overall design, bumpers etc.).
Yes, I was thinking of the floors. Also, feet and toes
Print speed’s definitely no big issue for me. Not sure what’s typical for something like this, but it’s just a bit over an hour. I could up the speed for this thing, but I’ve spent way more time in Blender. My thinking is I want it decently accurate so I don’t get any surprises when tightening things up later.
Yeah I have thought about the infill like you are. This case is pretty frikkin hard and very thick. I might make the sides thicker to keep heat away and possibly allow for some airflow if I can figure out a good design that allows for it. But with the low infill - air has a lot less mass than plastic to absorb heat energy, so I think I’m aiming for as hollow as possible thinking that’ll help. Maybe I’ll switch to PETG which might be better for a case but for now, PLA is a bit cheaper.
When I said this is a thicc boi I meant it! The outside frame of this beast is 4mm. So I guess comparable to those ‘Otterbox’ things. I’m probably going to go a little thicker on the edges, especially the left edge where I still notice a bit of heat.
Oh, if anyone has a thermal camera, or anyone from Purism is reading, I really could use a shot of the Evergreen edition under some load. I think the ones posted in this thread were for older editions.
This case, with the red cutouts, saved my L5 the other day. Fast spinning fall from about 1.5m. Landed flush, face down on debris-free concrete. Zero damage!
Revision 2. I must say, the heat is drastically reduced even when I get the numbers up to where they seem to max out most often. The temps have climbed a bit since the picture to 45. Maybe this is due to the case trapping heat (uh oh!) or I’ve just left it active longer than I typically do. Still the case doesn’t feel warm though so as long as it doesn’t keep climbing I think this is a success for my thermal goals. Too early to say yet.
More rounded edges, reduced thickness where the buttons are so they’re easier to reach. We don’t want the kill switches easily toggled and this solves that problem perfectly. Without a case I constantly would hit the HK switches by accident.
I decided to use a flat plate for the front since the textured effect looks a little odd to me on the front. Some very minor cosmetic glitches if you look close under light, but nothing very noticeable really without a close inspection. I suppose that could be cleaned up or sanded out, especially if I switched to ABS.
Back with the same ‘commercial product like’ texture. Added some fancy ‘ventilation’ diagonals for the (probable) hot spot. They are flush with the back, but not as thick as the case, so it’s still just air up against the back of the phone there (Is that where our theoretical “heat sink” might go? Hmmm…).
Here you start to see where I screwed up a little. I got a little too aggressive with the larger pins, and many of them ended up cutting through the outer edge. I did add a different type of “snap” connector for the corners only, which hold it together much better but still allow the case to come off. (Should I add small flathead screwdriver slots on the sides to make that easier? Hmm… maybe those could double as tiny heat air ventilation intakes?)
I also added a large void area on the left side where I tend to notice heat more, you can see the larger tab up at the top left. Makes the edge slightly thinner, but the thinking is that the gap reduces heat transfer to the edge of the case.
You can see the pin cutouts much more obviously here. Pretty sure I can fix that reliably by dialing down the pin size, moving them inside a little deeper, and/or making the case edge 1mm thicker or something. But no pin breakage on disconnection this time.
Latest revision of what I’m calling an “L5 Hard Insulated Case”. I’ve pulled those corners in big time (since the phone’s corners are round, I realized that I was leaving a huge gap that could be further rounded), and then rounded off all edges (it’s really a multi-faced bezel operation in Blender) with a more aggressive curve.
Still have the large gap on the left edge, and I also added small standoffs for the back of the phone (see 6 squares on the back) to reduce contact of the phone with the case. So there’s about .5mm of insulating air between the case and the phone. Plus the gaps on the edges are still there. The top edge still doesn’t have any standoffs but the bottom edge does.
The small numbers in the pic are the standoff measurements which essentially suspend the phone in the air. I don’t know if these .5mm/1.57mm etc. gap really allow for anything resembling “airflow”, but I guess in theory air can leak into the bottom of the phone where the USB plug is, up along the sides and back of the phone, and then out of the side slots where the buttons are and the camera/vent cutouts on the back. The diagonal vent also leaves a significant space between the phone’s presumed hot spot and the case (over 1.5mm!) while still having quite strong diagonal vent… things. Okay, I don’t know if that’s needed, but it looks cool.
I also slightly indented the top part of the case where the buttons are so they’re easier to press, especially the volume/power buttons. Kill switches have a less aggressive dent since of course we don’t want to hit those by accident.
Red/blue arrows: The back is 2.5mm thick (blue arrow). Case thickness on the bottom USB side was reduced slightly to 2.5mm. The sides still add a massive 3.5mm (less actual plastic on the left side to allow for the air gap). Top headphone side is 3.5mm thick still.
Anyone who read this far have any suggestions?
I’m thinking maybe the top should be slightly thinner with standoffs, and possibly a thinner back. I’ve already had one comment “Wow that’s a thicc phone!”, which of course is a good/bad thing: it’s a good conversation starter (“It’s more like a mobile computer…”), but of course people are brainwashed to think thicc == bad (I guess). Should I try toning down the back thickness?
I haven’t tried printing this version yet so no actual photo.
I think the airgap is indeed going to be insulation. I mean, that’s how insulation works, to gather and keep heat - it prevents efficient transference of heat. Proper airflow would need a better airgap but probably also mechanical airmovement (a fan of some size). A fan is more efficient the more surface it has to move the air over (and transfer that heat to air, thus cooling the phone). So, my position is that a firm fit would allow for better heat transfer away from the innards to the surface.
A solid structure (as opposed to either porous material or structurally not-filled printing pattern) would also help that. Normal plastics have a disadvantage already in this. A heavy/dence material also, as it can absorb more heat (more mass the better). Metals would be good for transferring heat - a metal pieces in the hottest places (with large surface area, like in heatsinks) with fan would be the most efficient (excluding liquids and gasses [liquid nitrogen L5 overclocking , anyone?]).
…And it goes without saying, not all of those are feasible here, with printing-only model or with L5 in general. One such more “out there” idea would be to design the case so (from thermal point of view only) that there wouldn’t be any normal back cover, but the external case would connect a fitted metal heat transfer plate (printed case would hold the metal plate) against the hottest inner surfaces via thermal pads (absolutely no airgap)…
Well, depends on the consumer. Might be that even more is needed for some: some want their bumper cases welllll overdone - beyond “tactical” and “military grade”… the “geek hack grade”!
[I almost put “beyond “toddler proof” and “idiot proof””, but having something at some grade does not make it proof of anything, just that much safer - they are always making more evil toddlers and better idiots to overcome protections ]
Yeah it’s pretty tricky when we both want to pull heat out of the phone and not feel the case heating up - conflicting goals.
The idea of trying to get a tiny fan in there to push air through is still an interesting one, but definitely a v2 type of project, maybe I will try that some day when I get crazier.
If you do… A standard mini fan or two would be easy to fit - just make the back that thickness, glue them in their holes and add a couple of holes for replacement air to get into the airgap + make recesses for cables, battery and switch (could fit coin batteries into that 5mm back). Would be more sane than what is sold for “gaming phones” (do a search for phone cooling fans - it’s pretty wild). Mini fans also come with usb-c connectors, if you want to use phone battery.
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