Building a BeagleBone Enclosure

I got to play around with a borrowed BeagleBone board to get some kernel stuff working for a friend. While playing around with it I decided to throw together an enclosure kit and a sled for the thing as well.  The sled is pretty easy to figure out, but the enclosure takes a little more effort to put together, so I thought I'd do a quick write up outlining how to assemble it.

First off, peel the masking off all your laser cut parts.

laser cut front panel

peeling protective film off of laser cut part

Next, you'll mount the BeagleBone to the bottom using 14mm M3 bolts, M3 nuts, and 1/4" OD 1/4" high nylon standoffs.  Make sure to mind the resistors on the back side of the board around the power connect (labeled R150 and R189).

zoomed image of R150 on BeagleBone

BeagleBone mounted

Next, you need to partially thread all the remaining M3x14 bolts into the T-slots of the spanning pieces and the end caps.  This is physically possible without assistance, but it's hard.  You'll want to save yourself some time by using some scotch tape and securing the nuts in place before inserting the bolts.

Nuts held in place with tape

Once this is done, you can slide in the bottom, sides, and top before finally tightening down the bolts.  Don't overtighten the blots, the enclosure is all acrylic and it will crack under extreme stress.

Bottom Installed

Sides Installed

Top Installed and Bolts Tightened

Other Side After Assembly

You can simply leave the top off if you want easy access to the expansion headers.  The Adafruit BeagleBone proto cape will even fit with the top off:

Here are some additional pictures of the enclosure with the USB host and peripheral interfaces plugged in (notice that you can see the status LEDs above the peripheral connection):

BeagleBone USB host connection through enclosure

Grab an enclosure kit including handy hex wrench from my store and you can grab all the design files and BOM from the Thingiverse entry.

BeagleBone SledYou can grab a sled kit there as well, if you feel like your BeagleBone would like a little more of an open air prototyping environment. You can find the design files for the sled, BOM, and instructions on its Thingiverse entry here.

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