Portable Case Warping

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I'm making a case for my GC portable, and I was wondering about what material I should use. I plan on using PLA for my case with 4mm thickness. For others who have made cases using PLA, did you notice any warping of the plastic when the portable is on or when it gets a little hot? If there is a big danger of warping, then I plan on coating the inside with epoxy or just using ABS. I kind of don't want to use ABS because the prints won't come out as nice, and I'll have to buy some because I don't have any right now.
 

Aurelio

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I used PLA for my portable Wii (with all the walls 3mm thick) and I had no problems, but the gamecube generates more heat. It depends a lot on how you make your heatsink setup.
 

Doom

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It shouldn't warp from the heat of the Gamecube. PLA melts at a range of 180°C to 220°C (ABS at 225°-260° Celsius. Not sure how hot the GC gets but I'm positive it's no where near that. Most warping from ABS is from a print lifting on the build plate, wherein usually a hot bed (100C+) and blue or kapton tape sprayed with hairspray (really!) will give you a good printing base. If you are still worried about additional warping, I would suggest PETG. Stronger than ABS, hardly any smell (I'd still print in a well vented area), but you can't "cure" it with acetone but since it seems you normally use PLA, shouldn't be an issue.
 
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I can definitely vouch for PETG. I've made a couple test prints for my portable and it comes out fantastic. Only downside is having to print very slow to get good prints. I have to print at around 30-40mm/s.

However, my case will have pretty thin walls (1.6 mm), so warping from PLA would be more of a problem over a long period of time. With such a thick case, PLA would probably work fine.
 

Aurelio

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I can definitely vouch for PETG. I've made a couple test prints for my portable and it comes out fantastic. Only downside is having to print very slow to get good prints. I have to print at around 30-40mm/s.

However, my case will have pretty thin walls (1.6 mm), so warping from PLA would be more of a problem over a long period of time. With such a thick case, PLA would probably work fine.
How strong are 1.6mm walls with PETG? With PLA they would be quite weak.
 
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In my experience, PETG has much better layer adhesion. Each layer fuses with the one below it better than PLA does. Overall PETG is a lot harder to break from my experience.

Only problem I found is PETG being too flexible. I am worried that the flexibility would cause paint to crack, but I plan to coat my case in epoxy to help with this.
 

Aurelio

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In my experience, PETG has much better layer adhesion. Each layer fuses with the one below it better than PLA does. Overall PETG is a lot harder to break from my experience.

Only problem I found is PETG being too flexible. I am worried that the flexibility would cause paint to crack, but I plan to coat my case in epoxy to help with this.
Thanks, I'll give it a shot
 
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