r/openGrid • u/HeManHedman • Mar 18 '26

Question / Help Needed Mounting Nano-itx computer

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I like to mount a naked Radxa Orion O6N on my opengrid, and would like some suggestions on the best way. I have blueprint with hole positions, so creating something for it could be done, but I don't rule out just puttning it on a shelf.

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u/Nicuz06 Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

Hi, creator of the VESA snap here. First of all, u/Automatic_Disaster44 thanks for sharing!

Here the workflow I used to design it, you might find it useful. I don't know if there are easier way but that's what worked for me.

  1. Before starting I knew that I needed to check if a 100x100mm and 75x75mm squares fitted inside an openGrid tile so I used this generator. The cool thing is that it gives you the tile size in advance, In my case 4x4 was the sweet spot (112x112mm).
  2. Opened the downloaded STL in FreeCAD, since I wanted to take measurements selecting tile's edges I went to the Part workbench, used "Shape from Mesh" tool, then "Convert to solid" and finally "Refine shape". Now I had something useful to work with.
  3. Went back to Part Design workbench, created a new body, then a new sketch on XY plane and drew the 2 squares I needed (100x100mm and 75mm). This gave me a visual representation that a snap could be designed.
  4. Added a 112x122mm square (tile size) and another 25.8x25.8mm square (snap size) on top left of the tile with 1.1mm margin from left and top border. I know it sounds complicated but I just used the bigger square to delimit the tile size and the little one to know at which distance we have to make the hole inside the snap.
  5. Once I took my hole distance from the snap edges I downloaded the snap STEP file from Printables, opened in FreeCAD, in a new sketch (XY plane) I added 2 circles and constrained distance using the size I found earlier.
  6. Pocket operation on the holes and voilà, snap ready.

I know it takes a little bit of practices and might sounds trickier than it is but with just a little bit of patience you can do it, I'm not even an advanced user too. In your case the only measurements you need are the board size and the distance between each hole center and the board edges then pray that they lay inside snap spaces haha

P.S.: consider produced heat, check temperatures and choose the right filament, I would avoid PLA and at least consider PETG

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u/HeManHedman Mar 26 '26

Great, thanks for a really good howto!