Pi Zero Stand

January 9, 2020

Although I purchased my first Raspberry Pi a few years ago, I have been recently finding excuses to pick up Raspberry Pi 3's and their little brother the Raspberry Pi Zero W (W for wireless). The Pi Zero is only 66 mm x 30.5 mm (2.4 in x 1.2 in) which means that when it's on a desk it's easy for it to get knocked around or even lost in papers.

Being a fan of NYC-based Adafruit, I recalled seeing a 3D printed Pi Zero stand and decided to make one in NJIT's Makerspace. The original learn guide for it comes from Adafruit's extensive learning system. The original model is very nice and clean looking, but when I opened the model in Fusion360 it looked like it could use a little customization. Having done my cable guides not that long ago, I decided to use the hexagon pattern I learned when making those to make the stand look more dynamic.  

Like all of my projects, there are things that I might do differently if I were to attempt it again, but for a first attempt, I think it turned out well. Because the face of my stand had much more detail than the original I decided to rotate the print so that face lay flat during printing. That, in turn, caused the "foot" of the stand to be a little rougher but since it is in the back, it's not very noticeable. Printing with a smaller layer height would probably have helped as well, but would have raised the price... $2 is hard to beat. 

A big thank you to Adafruit for publishing so many helpful guides as well as supplying quality supplies to the electronics hobbyist community. Thanks also to NJIT's Makerspace for providing the machine time and training to get beginners started on making the projects they dream up!