First post, by kaputnik
- Rank
- Oldbie
Been modeling some ATX I/O shields for 3D printing the last couple of days, and posted about it in the "What retro activity did you get up to today?" thread. Was kind of surprised by the interest for the models amongst other members, assumed that everyone here owning a 3D printer already would have done something similar, but apparently not. Figured it might be an idea to post the models in a separate thread, might be useful to more of you guys 😀
Test printed the shields in ABS. PET should be good too. Haven't tried PLA, but suspecting it might be too brittle, the latching edges might break when installing/removing the shield.
There's been some valid concern about electromagnetic interference in the thread. The simplest way I can think of to combat that is to apply aluminum foil tape to the rear side of the shield, and fold the tape around the edges to make electrical contact with the case, if the contact made by connector shieldings etc isn't enough. Aluminum foil tape is really easy to work with, and readily available at any well stocked hardware store. Copper foil tape would probably be even better, since it's designed for this kind of purposes, but it's quite expensive, and probably not trivial to get hold of everywhere. There's also copper foil tape used to keep slugs out of flower pots etc that might work, which probably is cheaper and more readily available.
If you got any suggestions on how to improve the shields, please tell me 😀