I finally bought a Beagle Bone Black and the first thing that struck me was that I needed a home for the board. I decided to make a laser cut plastic package so I designed the parts in Inkscape. Early on I made a decision to use 0.1″ acrylic because that is what Seeed Studio uses for their laser cutting service. Overall I am quite happy with how the package turned out but the button extenders need some work because they tend to slip off the actual physical button. For now the package is good enough but if I buy another board I will re-design the button access.
The design was captured in Inkscape and the design files are available here. (rename from *.txt to *.svg so that Inkscape can open the file)BeagleBone1_7x7Acrylic008 To initially test my design I cut 0.1″ cardboard to ensure that the fit was tight. After some minor corrections I cut the package from clear acrylic and glued five of the sides together to form a box. The acrylic glue was a bit stringy when I applied it so I might try 5 minute epoxy next time. The top of the box is removable and allows the board to be slipped into place after which the top is bolted in place with 3mm bolts.
I think a few LEDs added to the package would be useful for preliminary testing and backlit acrylic always looks cool.
The next step is to get EMC Linux running on the board so that I can develop a complete CNC solution at a low cost. Hopefully the real time processor will address and latency issues when driving the stepper motors.