Cooler Master Q300L Mesh Side Panel

I wanted a mesh side panel for my PC but couldn't print it in one piece on my Ender 3. This limitation led to me splitting the design into several parts and incorporating the hexagon/cube pattern, which matches the magnetic dust covers of the case.

The parts are designed solid, with a modifier used to make the mesh via infill. The center hexagon, while composed of 3 parts, is designed to be printed as one. Further detail on this is given below.

This side panel reuses the rubber spacers around the screws from the original side panel.

Print Settings

This will be PrusaSlicer specific since that is what I used. This is also assuming you cannot print everything in one go because your printer is too small.

• Open the .3mf file
• Click “yes” to load as single object with multiple parts
• On the right, right-click on the part named “mod”
  • click Change type → Modifier → OK
  • right click → Infill
  • right click → Layers and Perimeters
  • set top and bottom layers to 0, and perimeters to 1 (or one less than you normally use)
• Change the infill type and density to something you like. For me, with a 0.6mm nozzle, 20% honeycomb was what I chose.
• (optional) Under Print Settings → Infill → Advanced, change Fill Angle to 0 degrees.
• Go to File → Save Project as… and save these settings somewhere.

This has set you up with the modifier working properly, and you can go through and delete all of the parts except one, and slice. Rinse and repeat until all of the outer parts are sliced. 

The exception to this is the center hexagon part, which is broken into three parts, named “cube top”, “cube left”, and “cube right”. These three are not designed with any clearance between parts and are meant to be printed as one. To do this properly, each part has to be set with a different number of perimeters. This is due to a limitation of the slicer where it will just print one hexagon without the central lines if they all have the same number of perimeters set. 

• Delete every part except the three cube ones. This includes the modifier, as it is not necessary for this part.
• Right click on each → Layers and Perimeters
• Set top and bottom layers to 0 for each
• Set each one to a different perimeter value, e.g. 1, 2, and 3, for each part respectively (this is what I did)
• Go to Print Settings → Infill → Infill and set the fill density and type to the same as you had for the modifier, e.g. 20% honeycomb.
• Slice and print with a different color from the rest for that two-tone look.

Assembly

Once I had all the parts printed out, I sanded all of the mating edges with 100 grid sandpaper to ensure they were flat and to increase the glue bonding. Then, I glued the panel together one part at a time, using a straight edge on the outside edges for alignment.

I removed the rubber spacers from the holes in the original side panel and put them in place in the new side panel.

CAD files

A .step file is included if you want to import that into your CAD program of choice. Below is the link to the original OnShape document I designed the panel in.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b5ab9583367a07106f8675e1/w/368b34bb547e4220480cd932/e/42aacc1fc8fe7fe03f876c67?renderMode=0&uiState=6775b0d2f5386e356dc80b59