Housing
Since I didn’t necessarily want to start from scratch regarding the housing of the NAS, I first started the search engine of my choice and looked at what others have already achieved in this direction. For me personally, the following criteria were important:
- 4 bays / drive bays for 3.5″ HDDs
- Support for x86 / 64-bit platform
- Compact to fit on my 3D printer
- Good cooling of the hard drives
Since I still had an ITX motherboard with 4 SATA ports, it was natural to look directly for a case with ITX form factor.
Many DIY NAS rely on a Raspberry Pi or other single board computer, but I don’t think much of connecting via USB adapters and tinkering with multiple power supplies. There are now some really impressive expansion boards for the Raspberry Compute Module 4, but they usually fail due to availability, price, or both. After taking a closer look at some promising candidates, I decided to go with the following design by sharanchius:
So just download, print and you’re done, right? Unfortunately not, because for my purposes there were still a few things I wanted to change. The original creator of this design owns only a small printer with low print volume, so he divided the case into 43 individual parts. Rather impractical and costly if you have a normal sized printer and want to use it to its full potential. However, the full design was thankfully published, albeit only in a SketchUp readable file. So without any experience in SketchUp and rather mediocre experience in CAD design, I set about putting all the little individual parts together.
A few hours and several nervous breakdowns – caused by the clumsy handling and limitations of the free version – later it is done. 43 small parts have now become 11 big ones and I also reworked the unnecessarily complicated power button on the front so that you can just buy a ready-made one and install it. In addition, I still removed some of the now unnecessary connections and also – without exaggerating – repaired thousands of errors in the mesh of the files using Netfabb.
And while I’m at it, I also created some optional print files to ensure compatibility with various popular printers. The original template for this customized case is also available for purchase on Cults3D, I opted for the free release on Printables. Thingiverse is more popular, but has made a number of controversial changes and who knows where the journey will go there.
=> Download via Printables
So much for the “genesis” of my version of this case. Then on the next page, for those interested, there is a breakdown of the cost and time needed for printing.
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