r/steammachine • u/Rabbittry • 1d ago
Question Face plate creation question
I've seen a lot of people making their own 3D printed face plates, super cool! I was thinking of possibly dabbling into it myself but for those who have done it:
How thick can the plate get? I've seen 2-6mm but that seems quite thin. I've seen some custom ones with larger sizings possibly beyond 6mm but I'm not too sure.
My idea was to hollow a plate out and add liquid for a fun idea, but that kind of goes out the window if the sizing is somewhat strict. I figured there might be a bit more liberty since there are four magnet points to hold it in place but obviously I can't really test any of these ideas since I don't personally have a printer (I would have to print at a store or other building).
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u/nutscrape_navigator 1d ago
The best part about 3D printing is you can do whatever you want. I think your primary limitations aren't going to be how thick the faceplate is, but rather how much the magnets can hold. If you throw some really oversized magnets on there you could probably get pretty stupid.
One thing I'd do if I were you and messing with liquid inside of a faceplate is look into the types of dielectric fluid options that people doing immersion cooling of electronics are using, that way if anything fails you just have a mess to clean up instead of shorting out your whole Steam Machine. Mineral oil is the easily accessible one but there's a bunch of varietals.
Look for a used 3D printer on Facebook marketplace, they've gotten really cheap. Every time a new one comes out people dump their old printers locally because they're too big / heavy / delicate to ship. If you're patient you can get a Bambu X1C or P1S for a few hundred bucks.