The 3D printed holder for the ESP 32 is finished and needs a good looking frontpanel.
Choose the right material for the frontpanel
I choose a grey tinted acrylic material for the frontpanel. You can not see the display if it is not turned on, but if it is turned on you can see the content of the OLED Display through the grey tinted acrylic material. The acrylic material is also easy to cut with a CNC machine. So the cutout for the 16mm button, 20mm aluminum potentiometer knob and mounting holes is no problem.
Get it produced
For the production of the front panel i searched for a partner which produces such a frontpanel with this small size and cutouts. I did not find anyone who wants to produce this in a low quantity. So i decide to drill it myself with a 3018 china CNC drilling machine.
At this point i did not have a 2mm milling cutter. So i used the 3mm milling cutter and enlarge the mounting holes for the 3mm milling cutter. For the first test panel it is ok.
Mounting the frontpanel on the 3D printed holder
After the CNC is finished, i mounted the display on one of the 3D printed holder for the ESP32 frontplate and it looks really good.
The mounting holes are a little bit to big and i need to get a 2mm drilling cutter for it. So stay tuned for the new version of the CNC cutted acrylic frontpanel with the 2mm drilling cutter with better quality.
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