Axoctrl cases

The brief

Hohum Lab were launching their first commercial product: the Axoctrl, a controller board you can play with and tinker on. It needed a case — and not one, but enough for the launch.

Why 3D printing, on purpose

We chose printing from the start. The shape is simple, with few overhangs, and that simplicity left room to play with colour and material instead.

Moving from one to fifty changes the job. We had printed in several colours before, but never at this scale — it is a different problem when every case has to match the last one.

The top layer is translucent, so the LEDs on the board show through, along with the randomness they bring.

We used PLA, deliberately. Some would call that wrong for a final product. But ABS would have been overkill: harder to print, more expensive, for a device whose whole point is that you open it up and tinker. There were also fully transparent versions in PETG and some in wood-filled filament.

Where it stands

The Axoctrl shipped in our cases. It was an early lesson we still use: for tens or low hundreds of units, a printed enclosure designed for printing beats waiting for tooling — and lets you offer variants that a mould never could.

Product photos: Hohum Lab.