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Comment by happyopossum | Hacker News Reader

Fun writeup! I was surprised by the part about styrofoam boxes though:

  Despite their popularity, they have a few disadvantages:

  They come in predefined sizes which mandate a certain weight allowance
  They cannot be flexible for your specific payload, making it hard to be efficient with payload layout
  They are expensive compared to more custom solutions

This shocks me, as styrofoam is one of the easiest materials in the world to cut, shape, fasten, and customize to your heart's content. I'm all for 3d printing stuff, but in the theater world we build a ton of very detailed (and shockingly durable) stuff out of foam all the time....

Buying a styrofoam box and just accepting that it's gotta be that shape and size feels like a huge waste.

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Seems like the simple solution is a Styrofoam sheet, a $10 hot knife and some glue solves the customization problem almost trivially.

I think another point I hadn't included was the flexibility I had with prototyping different boxes. The hardware was changing all the time, and being able to just 3d print another revision was very convenient.

If I did something like that with styrofoam, it probably would have gotten pretty expensive. The precision you get from printing was also a plus, as there needed to be slots for cameras, antennas, and circuit board mounting holes.

What's expensive? You can buy a medium sized cooler for $5 at Walmart. That's a fair bit of foam.

You can get a 4' x 8' sheet of 1" EPS insulation from Home Depot for under $20 (thicker available if you need it, costs more) along with compatible construction adhesives.

You do have to be careful with glue selection because a lot of solvents will dissolve it, but there's plenty that will work.

There’s something to be said for using the tools your comfortable with. I’m a woodworker by passion, and a technologist by trade so I dabble in everything from cnc to 3d printing to hand tools.

If I happened to be super comfortable with fusion360 and 3D printers and not my overstuffed workshop full of other tools, I’d probably make the same choice.

In my intro Industrial Design class long ago we fashioned styrofoam and many other kinds of foam into every shape imaginable with a hot wire, some utility knives, and contact adhesive. A wood rasp worked well for organic and rounded forms (wear a mask), though that’s probably not needed in this application.

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