NES Cart Shadow Box Mount

I designed the part in Solvespace, a free and open source parametric CAD program.

It prints flat with no supports required. I chose to print in standard PLA, 20% rectilinear infill, 3 walls, with no top or bottom shells since they will not be visible. There are holes in the part specifically to make this style of print work more effectively. Skipping the top and bottom shells cuts about 2 hours off the print time and makes the part more flexible.

The hooks at the top fit into the snap tab indents of the cartridge, meaning this only works for the 3-screw variants. I printed test parts for each section before printing the full thing. The fit is comfortably loose on each section but combined together it's a pretty secure hold.

There are counter-bored holes for #2 wood screws. I ended up only using 2 of the 4 holes and in retrospect it would have been better to have one of those holes be a slot with a washer for easier angle tweaking.

I bought a shadow box from amazon and covered the foam core back plate with adhesive backed velvet. Poked some holes, screwed it together and...


It turned out pretty nice. I measured carefully for the left/right centering, but for the vertical centering I just eyeballed it. The asymmetry makes it look weird if you center it exactly.

Contains STL file and Solvespace CAD file.


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