Monthly Archives: June 2026

A few words about 3D printing

We have received some feedback on our enclosures in the last few days. It is important to understand that the enclosures we offer are printed in small series and partly 1:1 on Prusa 3D printers (filaments) or Anycubic (resin). They are not injection molded enclosures or otherwise industrially manufactured enclosures. These would simply be far too expensive in small quantities – and our quantities are already very large for retro computing. A housing for a KungFu flash module would probably cost more than €20 in industrial production. That’s why we print all housings virtually on demand in our office.

The colors we specify are always to be understood as “approximate”. Especially when it comes to “transparent” housings. “Transparent” with filament in the understanding of “crystal clear” and “transparent” is not feasible. The housings are slightly translucent but never transparent. This has to do with 3D printing. For example, our PD-64 has 16 layers of 0.2mm = 3.2mm on top of each other. As each layer is printed individually as a thin thread, it is not possible to achieve a transparent result, but the light refracts at each point in 16 layers. The more layers, the more often the light refracts, the more “opaque” the print becomes.

“Yes, but then print the housings thinner” – well, good idea, it’s just a shame that they then break very quickly or no longer have the required mechanical properties. 4-5 layers are still quite transparent, but only 0.8 – 1mm thick – which is unfortunately far too thin for a housing.

With resin/resin it is slightly different. There, the transparent colors are actually transparent to a certain extent – but even here it is not glass but the light refracts on significantly more layers.

So: Transparent = it is a little transparent, but not glass due to the production process.