FreeCad Tutorial #1 | How to model a GoPro Case for 3D Printing in FreeCAD

hi welcome to k-tech designs my name is seth welcome to this tutorial on how to make a gopro camera case the hero session 5 model with free cat in this tutorial i'll show you how to make this model and the back plate that goes with it i hope you find this tutorial informative and educational with that let's get started so the very first thing you want to do is get dimensions for the gopro the hero session 5 or hero 5 session the easiest way is to just google the size dimensions but of course you can always pull out a caliper or a ruler and take measurements of the device itself this is pretty easy a gopro session is just a square you can see it's 38 by 38 by 36 36 38 and then 38 down into the screen now with that we can start our model all right let's go ahead and create a new art make sure you are using the part design workbench let's create a body create a sketch pick the y yz plane for this sketch click ok now this sketch is going to be the profile of the part i'm just going to start it like this that's the basic profile now we want to add some constraints here i want these to be parallel that should be it now we can get to dimensioning i like to use a solidworks style mindset when using freecad i'm a long time solidworks user that's what is comfortable for me so i like to create metric constraints about axes geez should be vertical uh and an easy way to create those symmetric constraints is to simply add a dot a point on the other side of your axes and then click your two points and your excess of symmetry then click it click your symmetry constraint right that's looking good um i want to also create some reference geometry so i'm going to come over here click my reference line all right now this is going to make it easy to create a chamfer angle which should be 45. and now this represents the full length of the camera i actually want a small gap here a little projection in front of the camera and that should be about one millimeter i want the length of the camera or the base the camera sits in to be 37 so that's one millimeter longer um in that camera itself we'll have a millimeter gap on either side the gap on this side is actually to help with the door and this is for protection of the screen next i wanted to mention the opening so since i created these two points i can easily grab both of them and dimension them like this and that should be 38.3 and the same with this side i can dimension these two points and make that 36. um the next thing i wanted to mention is this space here this is the space on the camera uh directly over the lens this was a dimension that i measured i did not find this online i just use the caliper and that dimension is 3.25 millimeters great that looks good now we can set our wall thickness i'm using 1.5 millimeters and i want [Music] this leg to be one millimeter technically if this was an injection molded design you would want to make this thickness about as equal as this it just makes the injection molding process more reliable from a manufacturing standpoint but because this is 3d printed it doesn't matter okay we're done with that sketch let's go ahead and close it now we need to create another sketch this sketch will be the uh path for that profile click the xd plane click ok and i'm going to use a rectangle to start with i'm going to create a symmetric constraint there but do delete the selected it didn't like that horizontal it's not going to like that horizontal because i'm going to create another metric constraint here and that leg should be the inside dimension so it's 38.3 again and then these two can be equal because we got a square excellent oh not yet now i want to create some fillets use the constraint preserving sketch fill it because we just created a horizontal dimension there and i don't want to lose that all right now we can select all uh fillets and give them all the same radius do you want to share the same radius for the selected elements yes and that number should be seven seven millimeters now looks like we've lost a constraint doing that there we go okay so those are set that sketch is good close that now you can see we have our profile and our path so what i want to do is select the profile go up to here sweep along a path and then i'm going to add my edges or the path okay excellent we've got the the biggest part of it done all right now we need to create some cutouts we need to cut out for the charger charging bay and the sd card access and we need to cut out for the lcd screen and the button let's go ahead and do that grab that surface click sketch this feature is pretty easy pretty simple it's just a rectangular cutout i'm going to add some reference geometry geometry i know in freecad it's not generally good practice to do that because if you change anything in the features before this feature those reference names are going to change and so the reference points are going to move um i i don't know there's no real way around doing reference dimensioning reference design so i guess i just deal with it if i break something then i just do the work to go back and fix it okay that dimension should be 2.5 millimeters i forgot to make this metric about the plane the overall height should be 19 millimeters and then this reference should be six millimeters move it close that select uh create a pocket then i go to to first because i will uh just pick the next face the next feature as your depth click ok now we want to create the top click that face select sketch um lcd screen is square so we're going to put a square there we're going to create an attachment there to the arch arc and then trim we can trim this nope cannot trim that sorry and trim that and then we delete that leg and that leg um delete that making these symmetric make these uh coincident uh then we need a sketch reference i don't want that line i did i did notice that points seem to be a little more robust than a whole line so i generally use points when i'm making a reference this dimension should be 5.5 this leg should be 21. uh the thickness of that feature should be eight millimeters this leg oh i should set these equal let's set these you don't like that why not okay well now it's happy that behaves correctly uh these should be tangent you can press t for tangent select your two lines to be tangent what do you i like about that i guess it doesn't need to be tangent there so i will leave that off um this dimension should be 5.3 this oh that's interesting hmm well why don't i dimension this quick this should be seven and maybe i'll just make these vertical okay i like that all right that's the pro or that's yeah that's the uh cut profile go ahead and pad or cut that again to first go to create that is strange it's telling me that it's happy how do i get rid of that get rid of that hmm maybe if i get rid of the equals 17. oh that was a tangent constraint i didn't want oh that was odd okay well i think i fixed that now okay yeah that was weird equals redundant oh it's you okay that fixed it that's those are the kind of glitches you get with free cad it uh it's definitely a learning curve to know what to look for figure out things like that okay but this is looking good the next thing i want to make is the hinge so the hinge attaches over here and then we're going to have to make the latch over here and the final feature will be your mounting mounting feature okay so to commit to make this hinge it's not too difficult we're going to click on the xy plane and i want to create a reference there i want to line out here align down and that line out here i want an arch arc sorry make those tangent make these tangent and then i need a center oh now when we get to dimensioning this distance should be five millimeters this radius right this radius should be 3.25 millimeters this diameter should be 3.5 millimeters and finally i want it over these at an angle of 60. okay i guess i can't move that but close and we're going to pad this we're going to make it symmetric and that dimension should be 24 millimeters that looks great all right let's make the cutout at the bottom and that's just clearance finger clearance for pressing the uh on off button alright so that's another sketch we want uh the polyline called the polyline like this trapezoidal shape we need to add a reference here and then we're going to make these vertical let's put that line this line on that reference let's make these metric about this plane go ahead and delete that vertical constraint and then these points as well symmetric about that plane remove the vertical this dimension should be [Music] 21 and i actually want to create a reference here so that i can make these 45 and finally this width should be 3 millimeters close that sketch cut that first there oh before i get too far we need to create a gap here for the back cover to mate up with the hinge so let's create a sketch on there that sketch is going to be just a square cut out make these two symmetric about that plane i'm going to add this point as a reference make those horizontal to each other looking good this width should be seven millimeters and i could make a reference point here and then make that horizontal but i think what i'm going to do in this case is simply over dimension out to 8.5 millimeters so that it will cut straight through and i can limit how many reference constraints i have reference points cut or close that cut that this you can also do two first okay that looks pretty good now i want to create the latch for the cover and i'm going to attach to this surface click that surface click sketch for this feature i am going to add these two references and we'll add our line we want to go down a little bit and then over we want uh these to be collinear i'm gonna add a point here since i know what this opening size is i'm just going to replicate that and i'll do that by creating a symmetric point grab those two points um of course disoriented it's actually a vertical or whatever that was and then that's 19. horizontal sorry now i need to go back to that view add my arc grab these two lines make them tangent these two lines tangent as well um and i need an arc to mimic copy this and i'll just dimension that right away to 8.5 and i know that number because i took a measurement of the arc you could also just calculate it directly knowing that we made this 7 millimeters and that the wall thickness is 1.5 obviously 7 plus 1.5 is 8.5 i want this measurement i want to measure it reference in reference to this wall here should be four this arc radius should be 4.25 this hole is a clearance hole so its diameter is 3.5 a clearance hole for an m3 like it hit cap screw now you can see that's fully dimensioned we'll close that add that now when this happens um i don't i don't exactly know why but if you click reverse then your geometry should show up because it'll start padding in the right direction and then that overall pad length should be six millimeters now i'm adding a hex nut to this um latch that the m3 screw goes into so i'm going to click this face and add a hex feature first i want to copy that and then we add the hex uh i don't know if it matters which leg is vertical which orientation you use of course try yeah because it's within this circle um you'll have a constant thickness so you don't have to worry about whether the points are too close or not but out of habit i like to make the point um go up i don't know i guess it's arbitrary sometimes i make it horizontal uh there's really no right way to do that um now actually i want to measure this across the flats so i'm going to go ahead and grab that dimension and that should be 5.7 close that sketch this will be a pocket pocket should be 2.5 millimeters deep there you go that looks great we're almost done final major feature to add is going to be the rail mounting system i've got two designs for that system one is just a simple hole with uh you know a triangular feature and a space between two of those um but then later on i thought well maybe a a rail would be even easier because then you could make any kind of attachment adapter um so that's what i'm going to go with for this tutorial to do that we want to create a sketch and i want to create it about the x z plane click i have to click my plane there we go okay we want to add at least one reference point and this is going to be i'm going to use a polyline for this you could use a series of or you could use two squares cut use the trim tool and cut out the middle and that's generally what i do in solidworks but recad is just a little bit different so i i tend to use polylines instead let's go ahead and make this oh i made those horizontal to each other so that my feature is attached to the bottom of this case i'm going to add my metric constraint delete that horizontal i'm going to add a symmetric here as well delete that horizontal and then i want to make these um actually i don't think i have to do that i'll make these equal this leg dimension should be six millimeters wide this dimension 14 millimeters this thickness is 2.5 and this is 4. now you can make this whatever dimension you want um and come back in and change it whatever works for you close that sketch add that reverse the direction i want it to go all the way to the back well not quite all the way to the back we want that to go down 20 millimeters nice the final thing to do now is to add some fillets i want to fill all of the edges on the inside of here one millimeter fillet is fine go ahead and grab all of those edges click okay that looks good and i want to fill it these as well my experience this dimension will not fill it i'm not sure why i guess free cad can't handle this intersection solidworks seems to handle it just fine but regardless uh just gonna add these three edges and you could do all of these fillets in one feature you don't have to do it in two but sometimes it's nice to separate billets from different features uh in case you need to edit something here um things could break or who knows what um and then these could be filleted as well i think i'll actually add them to the side door cut out now these fillets are a little bit arbitrary you really don't need them if you're going to 3d print them because your 3d printer can't print sharp edges and features like this it kind of depends on the orientation but even sharp features like this they won't be that sharp your extruder bead your the extrusion bead um is going to be rounded anyway so not really necessary but i like to do it as a matter of habit if you're going to design something for injection molding or whatever it doesn't hurt to put those in there okay uh we're done you could add some fillets in here too but again because the way it's going to be printed it's going to be printed like this your orientation of the extrusion path of your extruder path is going to be like this and so all of these edges will be broken anyway because your 3d printer is not going to make a hard turn okay wonderful now let's move on to the back cover go back to the start page click create new and it'll make a new part i've already saved it and named it so that it's showing up here until this is the body of the part we made for the gopro case and now this is the new backplate so we want to go to create body in tasks we had a sketch we'll pick pick the xz plane click ok get our polyline and we'll start from the bottom point up and then over making this funky shape here we'll go ahead and make these point symmetric about the plane and the same with this one these upper points metric about or vertical plane these should be equal i think in this case i'm going to simply key in the dimensions for both instead of making an equal constraint um if i add a fillet then i'll have to make those two resulting lines equal again but if i create a fillet and these are already these points already existing then it'll be fine i won't have to redo anything and so this dimension is picked off of the overall dimension of the case again you can measure that or you can calculate it measuring is pretty easy this leg dimension should be 11.15 this dimension is 10 millimeters this dimension is 12. want to add a reference line here that i can add my angle dimension of 45. great close that add that pad is 1.5 millimeters next i want to create my uh fastening the latch feature i've made the latch features separate from the the base sketch just because i may want to make certain edits to it that could disrupt the larger body but you don't have to do it this way you could make all the features i'm about to make uh on the root sketch and then pad it anyway i'm going to make a sketch i'm just going to pick the x z plane again i don't have to click i don't have to select that face because we're going to pad in the same direction and the same depth now that i have this i do want to create some reference points here and here and i want to create a sketch line between those a line out here and a line up here i want my arc oops attach those prefers that attachment force tangent and you can press t for tangent i need a hole for the screw to pass through okay i've got all my features this dimension is four millimeters and if you remember we made the same dimension on the camera case so i dimensioned to that outer wall and then to the hole that just makes design easier to dimension from the same features so that you have the same nominal this arc should be 4.25 millimeters now this hole is a through hole clearance hole so that's 3.5 millimeters okay i'm going to update i can't update that there we go and that's good because that was tangent excellent was that add that 1.5 good now i want to create the hinge the hinge attachment on this side and [Music] that's a pretty easy sketch to do we're going to click the xy plane that's another thing that is very useful about making symmetric sketches about these planes is features can be symmetric about those planes so you don't have to dimension or you don't have to create features off of body reference faces or whatever you can use your planes to make dimension easier and when you get to assemblies and you need to mate things together that helps a lot as well alright so this let's add these two references as well make our line here and it doesn't like that it's horizontal if it's attached to that plane i'm gonna add a little chamfer feature there okay then with those lines we'll add our arc t for tangent and i'm going to actually get a reference line i'm going to make that 45. i need to add where's it a hole here now this hole is actually going to be a thread cutting hole because it's plastic you don't actually need a thread tapping screw to cut threads into it they just kind of cold form out of the way i'm going to make this diameter 3.2 millimeter okay i don't know why sometimes it doesn't let me grab those right away this arc should be a three point one odd radius over a little bit these this hole on this edge to be five millimeters long and then i need the hole from this edge to be three that's not quite fully dimensioned that it must be because of this chamfer here i didn't set that size let's go ahead and set the size to i don't know two millimeters uh three three all right it's a little ugly but again it's 3d printed so don't worry about it close that sketch pad it make it symmetric it is not happy with me for some reason uh the model went away all right what did i do wrong what did happen oh uh close your sketches that will help when making all right make that symmetric and again six uh if you recall i made a cut in the case of seven seven millimeters so you want to make sure that this is less than that i picked six that'll give us plenty of clearance for the hinge to move freely uh let's tidy this up a bit i want to add some billets they need to be 8.5 millimeters to match the outer case billets um just those two edges need that and then these smaller edges or these edges can use some smaller fillets uh one millimeter is fine i don't think it'll let me fill with that this could use a fillet doesn't have to i'm going to go ahead and add the large fillet there i'll make it look nice now you can press space bar change all right so here's a good example of what happens when you make any kind of edit so i added fill it here retroactively and now these two edges that i selected are gone i don't know where they are they're going to be tiny so it's going to be hard to find them so what i'm doing here is adding these back in and the other ones that i couldn't find you just right click and click remove okay little quirks of the program actually i'm going to add just to make it a little nicer i'm going to add these two edges as well okay okay now we're pretty much done um this edge actually needs i want a countersink there that's too large we'll leave it at one for now i want to use the countersink fastener here so that this surface is nice and flat i don't want to have a large cap screw sticking out so add a little chamfer there it technically should be 1.7 millimeters but if you do that you actually cut into this surface a little bit you won't have this flat here solidworks is okay doing that freecad apparently is not happy with it so just get close okay the final thing to do on this part is to create or create a sketch on the surface a one mil millimeter thick boss feature and that is to push up against the camera you remember we had a one millimeter gap between the back of the camera and the back of the case well we're going to add a one millimeter feature here to fill that gap so we have a nice tight fit with the camera i'm going to use a polyline here sorry not a polyline i'll just make this square i guess i could have used a polyline i know that you can make offset sketches and dimension their thickness i don't think it's that important to do on this small of a feature so i'm just everything out all right i want to add this edge this point and this point i'm going to go ahead and make these two i don't know if i can make them concentric but i can make these coincident do that i guess i'll go ahead and dimension this edge i want it to be two millimeters wide actually three millimeters wide i don't want to have to do reference geometry so what i'm going to do is create a mirrored point yeah that looks good and so that dimension should be 37.8 now if you remember the inside dimension was 38.3 but i don't need this to be in contact with or actually don't want it to be in contact with the outer case i wanted to sit inside the case and touch the camera let's make this symmetric about here though and then this one as well metric about horizontal plane let's make this leg 25 millimeters and this leg as well 25. oh dear lord tangent t for tangent there we go sorry um i won't even need these because these should be tangent as well all right that is done close sketch pad it one millimeter add add fill it click ok all right i was supposed to fill it that well we're gonna add it um i'm gonna add it to this fillet feature because if i go back one of these fillets and add this line in there i'm going to screw up everything now we're done now you have your back cover and your case and that concludes this tutorial please leave a like if you liked this video please leave a comment to let me know what you thought again thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next episode [Music] [Music] you

Channel: KTEC DESIGNS

Views: 723

Keywords: FreeCAD, GoPro, 3DPrinting

Id: 0DwJWXrPDMQ

Length: 46min 22sec (2782 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021