We finally have received the samples of enclosure consisting steel sheet metal cover and aluminum heat sink plates. So the front panel art comes with trees as voted best in the previous posts. My thanks to everyone giving comments to that post! It really helped us to make the best choice.
Argon prototypes with industrially made covers. LED numbering texts (above the RJ45 sockets) were mistakenly forgotten from the front panel art.
The cover slips on smoothly unlike the first self made prototype which required bending one side in order to install it on the device. The realized design looks and feels very solid and leaves only little space for improvement. However, few improvements will be carried out mainly to help assembly, most of them being related to threading for mounting screws and adding more accuracy to bends.
To the final design I’m also considering to add an placeholder hole for possible extension port that could be installed inside the drive as stack-on circuit board. Extension boards could be made by end users, third parties and of course by us.
That’s looking very good!
Really needs text detailing what connector pin is what, the last thing you want in a field repair situation is trying to find a manual just to look up what pins do what. Which pins go to the power supply? Which pins go to the motor? Which pins go to some control signal, etc. All these things are stuff that should be printed there wherever possible. Pretty designs don’t mean a lot when it’s 2am and you’re trying to figure out why a machine won’t go! Other than that looks great – Any idea when it will be released for sale?
Indeed! There already are pin names for screw terminals. However D-sub and ribbon cable connectors won’t have pinout in covers as there would be too many to list.
Any idea on when some might be coming out?
“When it’s ready”. No single compromise will be made just to push it out at some specific date.
I hate giving dates, but its looking good and if it stays that way, we could start sales in 2 months!
Nice – just like planned. I’d like to touch it. Great job!