27 Free DIY Eurorack Case Designs

Nathan Thompson has shared a variety of free (‘free as in beer’) DIY Eurorack case designs via Thingiverse. 

The cases are designed so that they can be manufactured via a laser cutter service or DIY:

  1. 42HP 3U Skiff 70mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1205874
  2. 42HP 4U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1205901
  3. 84HP 3U 93mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1205913
  4. 84HP 3U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1205983
  5. 84HP 3U 63mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206004
  6. 84HP 3U 10mm Acrylic –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206029
  7. 84HP 4U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206047
  8. 84HP 4U 133mm 10mm Acrylic –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206051
  9. 84HP 6U 80mm Skiff and Lid –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206069
  10. 84HP 6U 93mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206075
  11. 84HP 6U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206087
  12. 84HP 6U Skiff 63mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206102
  13. 84HP 6U Studio –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206118
  14. 84HP 7U 93mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206125
  15. 84HP 7U 123mm 10mm Acrylic –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206141
  16. 84HP 7U 123mm with Lid –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206275
  17. 84HP 9U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206304
  18. 84HP 9U Studio –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206307
  19. 84HP 11U 123mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206311
  20. 104HP 3U Skiff 63mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206319
  21. 104HP 8U 83mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206325
  22. 104HP 12U Studio Case –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206334
  23. 42HP Vectrex Synth Case –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206348
  24. 84HP 7U Studio 10mm Acrylic –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1207296
  25. 84HP 21U Studio Tower –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1207319
  26. 104HP 13U Skiff 83mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1207335
  27. 168HP 6U Skiff 83mm –http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1207342

18 thoughts on “27 Free DIY Eurorack Case Designs”

      1. Someone is kindly sharing his work for free, so that some people won’t spend much time thinking about it while getting cheaper and convenient eurorack cases, and still someone is ranting about it…

  7. This is labeled up here as ‘Open Source’. I don’t think these are “open source”?

    “These designs are offered free for you to use for personal use only, a lot of my time has been put into producing these designs and I hope you enjoy your new case.

    “This particular design concept is offered free of charge with permission from Gareth David Johnson and is not for redistribution or resale.”

    To me, these seem to be the exclusive commercial designs of Gareth David Johnson, yet holding a copyright under Creative Commons, with an ‘Attribution – Non-Commercial – Share Alike’ license. That is a fairly open license, but you would have to seriously modify his designs, he does want to see remixes, to claim any ownership as a commercial design for your own purpose, but then you would still need to give ‘Attribution’ on his side of the license, and the Share Alike policy means that any remix would need to be issued under a similar license – messy and complicated if you want to sell your own cases in the future.

    But all the same, I like the designs and the free use policy – but clear up the terms here.
    Also reminded me of this I found on ebay the other day: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Eurorack-Modular-Synth-Case-/291640122976

    1. Good point.

      Creative Commons licenses tend to get lumped together with ‘open source’ but allow for both open source and non open source variations.

      I checked the open source hardware foundation, and this is what they had to say:

      To enumerate the particulars, the following licenses are compatible with open source values:

      Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
      Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
      Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
      While the following licenses carry restrictions that are not compatible with open source:

      Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND)
      Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
      Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
      Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

      I’ve updated the post headline to reflect this. Thanks for the feedback!

    2. Hi Kuwa,

      Just to clarify these case were mostly designed and built by Nathan Thompson of NLC, I only helped design the 21U for my own use and hence my name is on that particular design.

      I think Nathan’s intention with the licence is for re-use for personal purposes but not for mass production and financial gain.

      Maybe he has used the wrong licence if that is his intention, I will try to contact him and find out 🙂

      Thanks,

      Gareth.

  8. Thanks, for clearing up.

    It is a tricky area, I recall an issue years ago with free vst software – some people downloading it and packaging it together as CD for sale – which wasn’t the terms of the free end user license. They only had a right to download a use the software for themselves and not for redistribution.

    I suppose it would be similar for someone to think just because the new U2 single was given to them free that they therefore have a right to sell it on. Free and open don’t always mean that.

  12. Don’t know if anyone is reading this thread anymore… but I’m wondering.. is there an easy way to find out total square footage of material? That seems to be an important figure when estimating Laser cutting service costs.

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