Introduction: ATX Power Supply Breakout Case

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About: To learn is to live!

I purchased the below ATX breakout board and needed a housing for it.

Materials

  • ATX Breakout board
  • Old ATX power supply
  • Bolts and nuts (x4)
  • 2.5mm self-tapping screws
  • Washers (x4)
  • Rocker switch
  • Cable ties
  • Heat-shrink tube
  • Solder
  • 3D filament (back & glow-in-the-dark)

Tools

Software

Step 1: Prepare the Board and Power Supply

Unscrew the output terminals.

Using the de-soldering pump, remove the one-off switch can any of the outputs that you don't wish to use. I removed the -12V LED as I do not wish to use the -12V outputs.

Solder leads onto each of the outputs, terminating each one with a washer. You may need to file the washers down a little in order to get the solder to attach properly to them.

While not necessary, in order to keep things as neat as possible I opened the power supply, disconnecting all leads that would not be used by the breakout board. De-soldering them proved to be rather difficult and so I simply cut them, making the ends safe using heat-shrink tubing.

Solder on the leads that will be use to connect to the switch.

Step 2: Printing the Case

The model was created using FreeCAD. If you wish to edit it, download "PowerSupplyV2.fcstd.txt", renaming to
"PowerSupplyV2.fcstd".

Initially I printed the case in two colours i.e. the main sections of the case in back and the numbers in glow-in-the-dark filament. The numbers however broke off and so I then printed them as three separate pads, gluing them on. Before printing these pads, I scaled them down to be 10mm wide.

Step 3: Putting It All Together

  • Screw the breakout board into the base.
  • Attached the output terminals to the top part of the case.
  • Push the attached washers onto the remaining threads of the corresponding terminals and bolt them down.
  • Thread the switch leads through the side switch hole and solder them to the rocker switch, inserting the switch afterwards.
  • Place the top o the case over the base and line it up with where you want it to sit on the ATX power supply. Mark where the holds should go, using a drill to drill them out.
  • Using the nuts and bolts, attach the box to the top of the power supply.
  • Plug the ATX cables into the breakout board and test.
  • Use cable ties to tidy-up any cabling.

(You may need to file the edges of the case a little so that the ATX connector fits properly)

You should now have a cheap but neat and functional power supply to test your projects on.