I wanted to create a very basic, high capacity Nintendo Switch cartridge case for travelling. It’s not very elaborate, my priority being the simplest geometry with the smallest footprint for the amount of games.
Please feel free to edit or take inspiration from this design; from actual closing mechanisms to aesthetic improvements this has a lot of room for improvement. Like I said, I just needed something that did this one thing and nothing else, but felt like sharing it just in case it could be of use to somebody else too.
Print Settings
Printer brand: Creality
Printer: Ender 3
Rafts: No
Supports: No
Resolution: 0.2mm
Infill: 0%
Filament_brand: PrimaValue
Filament_color: Light Grey
Filament_material: PLA
Notes:
I had some trouble slicing this with Cura on account of the thin walls but PrusaSlicer had a much easier time even at close to stock settings, so I can only vouch that it works with that.
Post-Printing
Add games to the base part, cover with the top, wrap a rubber band around it and presto, it’s Kirby.
How I Designed This
60 was an arbitrary amount (I have nowhere that many, but it can’t hurt to overprovision, right?) and based on all possible row/column combinations, this shape – 4 by 15 – has the least surface area of 61.01cm²; all others, such as 5×12 or 6×10 are larger. For the nerds, the area was calculated as `ROWS*22mm + (ROWS-1)*0.4mm + 2*0.8mm * COLS*4mm + (COLS-1)*0.4mm + 2*0.8mm` Plop in your own row/column preferences to double check.
The cartridge dimensions I used were measured by myself and I left just a bit of wiggle room by rounding to the next largest millimeter, i.e. the slots are just a bit oversized at 22mm x 32mm x 4mm.
I tried a few test prints with a little locking pin to keep the cartridges from sliding out of the case but no settings I tried felt right, so I decided I’d rather live with loose cartridges than have them get stuck (which did happen in a few test prints and made me panic a bit xD)
The outer walls are 0.8mm, the dividers are 0.4mm and the bottom and top are each 0.6mm. It’s not a rugged design, but it’s probably not going to be exposed to much force so I consider it “good enough for what it’s supposed to do”.
There is no mechanism to holding the top and bottom half together, again I decided that just using a rubber band would be the simplest solution, rather than, say, printing a hinge of some sort.
Credits:
LordHonk
Download 3D models
| File | File size |
|---|---|
Nintendo+Switch+Simple+Cartridge+Case
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682 KB |