Retro tech always looks good in transparent cases, so let’s make a crystal version of the NES Monster Game Controller.
Noticing that PCBWay provides a resin printing service with really nice results for transparent prints, I decided to try them out for this crystal case. I simply uploaded the STEP files for the case front and back parts to them and picked transparent resin as medium. The case arrived within a week and the print quality was very impressive.
Here’s a few pictures of the assembled controller from different angles:
I learned from this experiment that resin doesn’t really behave the same way as PLA filament when it comes to threaded inserts for screws :-). Resin doesn’t melt or soften as PLA does when heated up with a soldering iron – it just starts to crumble and becomes brittle. So instead of heat sinking these threaded insert into the case, I used a super glue to fix them in place.
Another thing I noticed was that tolerances seem to not translate that well from a print made for PLA to one in resin. The case halves don’t slide together as easily as the PLA versions do, but this was no big issue since they still could be assembled.
Other than that, working with these resin parts was pretty easy and I would recommend trying transparent resin prints for projects like this.
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