Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Larger electronics enclosure #11

Open
lostapathy opened this issue May 16, 2019 · 7 comments
Open

Larger electronics enclosure #11

lostapathy opened this issue May 16, 2019 · 7 comments
Labels
enhancement New feature or request RailCore 2.5 Major improvements to RailCore 2, that may not be easily possible.

Comments

@lostapathy
Copy link

It would be quite helpful if the electronics enclosure on the 300ZL was larger. There seems to be ample real estate to do it and I'm not sure of any compelling reason not to.

Doing so would allow us to make the wiring tidier as well as improve our options for better isolating/shielding the wiring (or at least terminals) that carry mains voltage. I designed some parts for guarding the power supply terminals, but actual assembly was problematic in the current enclosure (issue #9 should help that, though).

It appears we could expand the enclosure 25-30mm toward the front and back and 50mm vertically lower and still fit comfortably, as well as still allow the cover panel to be cut from the waste piece out of the machine's front panel.

Obviously this could be made available in future panel sets by just cutting them for the new enclosure size. We could also develop a retrofit kit that includes the updated electronics box panels as well as printable corners that use the new panels but still mount to the old holes so that older railcores don't need new mounting holes cut.

@lostapathy lostapathy added enhancement New feature or request RailCore 2.5 Major improvements to RailCore 2, that may not be easily possible. labels May 16, 2019
@kraegar
Copy link
Contributor

kraegar commented May 16, 2019 via email

@lostapathy
Copy link
Author

The electronics panel is sized so it can easily and efficiently be cut out
of the scrap of the front panel.

Maybe I wasn't 100% clear as submitted, but I actually did measure mine and there's quite a bit of room for growing this cover and still cutting it from the waste.

It appears the electronics box was sized for the 250ZL and not scaled up when the 300ZL was designed.

@kraegar
Copy link
Contributor

kraegar commented May 16, 2019 via email

@dandancheeseandham
Copy link
Member

The electronics panel is sized so it can easily and efficiently be cut out of the scrap of the front panel. I'm not positive of Joe's milling layout, but enlarging it may actually end up increasing the kit costs due to more HDPE use / waste, and additional milling time.

Oh! I did not realise that this was a design constraint! I guess because your photo, and a lot of photos from self-builders (so selection bias there admittedly) have all had acrylic electronics enclosures. Now I think about it, the kit builders do use all HDPE.
It makes sense to reduce waste.

I'm torn though, as a ZLT owner, it's also bloody awesome to have plenty of room 😄. If a bit more room can be eked out, (and just 1mm added to each side becomes 1324mm^2 in area) and I'm sure it would be appreciated by the new kit builders and self-builders alike.

@kraegar
Copy link
Contributor

kraegar commented May 16, 2019 via email

@dandancheeseandham
Copy link
Member

Yeah. Understood. I think it is realised that this is more of an involved upgrade than most.

@lostapathy
Copy link
Author

Yeah. Understood. I think it is realised that this is more of an involved upgrade than most.

Correct - that's why I tagged as "railcore 2.5" as per the discussion on #4

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
enhancement New feature or request RailCore 2.5 Major improvements to RailCore 2, that may not be easily possible.
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

3 participants