RFIDeas RDR-805H1AKU Contactless Card Reader Snap-In Box / Cover

If necessity is the mother of invention, then emergency is surely its father. Needing to deploy a contactless card reader for a mobile health screening, but having no housing with which to do it, a coworker asked if I could 3D print something. It was all downhill from there.

Some notes and observations. First, this is a really tight fit to the reader panel. I mean really tight. Although the interior lip does allow the retention clips to engage, this is basically a friction fit setup, so you'll probably have to press harder to insert the reader than you initially feel comfortable doing. You might benefit from gently heating the print with a hair dryer before trying to insert the reader.

The opening in the back allows the retention clips to be disengaged, and the reader to be pushed out of the housing. You can feed the USB cable either out the back or through the pass-through in the bottom, depending on your application.

This is one of those projects where the working scale was both fun and a little infuriating. Some of the bits are only a millimeter or two, and I was genuinely surprised when the first print fit exactly. I was also pleased with the way the details turned out, particularly given the annoying difficulty doing chamfers and fillets in TinkerCAD.

Anyway, I know this is a pretty specialized application, but hopefully someone else can make use of it.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Ultimaker

Printer:

Ultimaker 3

Rafts:

Doesn't Matter

Supports:

Doesn't Matter

Resolution:

.06 mm

Infill:

50% (Gyroid)

Filament: Ultimaker PLA Black

Notes:

As is often the case with my projects, both the resolution and infill level are sort of insane. But given the finicky details on the project, I do feel the ultrafine resolution produced a much more professional-looking product, and the higher level of infill (set to gyroid, rather than triangle) led to a rigidity that the earlier .2 mm / 20% fast draft lacked.

Can be printed without supports, if you don't mind a little barely-noticeable droop in the bridge at the top of the cable pass-through. The interior lip has a 45° fillet underneath, and so doesn't require supports.

I also printed a version, which I didn't photograph, in red Ultimaker Tough PLA, with similar results (plus, it looks pretty snazzy).

Post-Printing

No postprocessing required, provided you don't print with supports.

How I Designed This

Built in TinkerCAD.

Category: Other