Weekend Pi + 3D print projects

A Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-size computer, and a 3D printer is basically a hot-glue gun on rails that lays down plastic one layer at a time. Put them together and you get projects where the Pi is the brain and the printed parts become the body, which is exactly what How-To-Geek rounded up on April 10, 2026. (howtogeek.com) The list skips tiny boards like Raspberry Pi Pico and Raspberry Pi Zero and sticks to the full Raspberry Pi line, because these builds need enough power to run video, software-defined radio tools, or game front ends. The article’s five examples are a retro television, a cyberdeck terminal, an arcade-and-synth box, an Astro Pi replica, and a miniature 1990s desktop computer. (howtogeek.com) The retro television is called TVArgenta, and Ricardo Sappia built it around a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with a 4.3-inch display, a rotary encoder knob, and a printed shell shaped like a cathode-ray tube television. His original version played 1990s Argentinian commercials offline, complete with channel surfing, static, and an on-screen display. (hackster.io, raspberrypi.com) The cyberdeck is the opposite idea: not a fake old TV, but a portable computer that looks like it came out of a science-fiction prop room. How-To-Geek points to Tom Mladenov’s Raspberry Pi software-defined radio cyberdeck, which packs radio-monitoring tools into a compact Peli 1200 case for jobs like air-traffic monitoring, weather-balloon tracking, and spectrum surveillance. (howtogeek.com, hackaday.io) The arcade project is called Ntron, and it mixes two jobs into one box instead of pretending to be one old machine. Artifextron’s design uses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for RetroPie gaming and adds a hapiNES chiptune synthesizer, so the same printed enclosure can switch between arcade cabinet and music instrument. (makerworld.com, hackster.io) The Astro Pi build is the most educational one, because it copies hardware that actually flew to the International Space Station. Raspberry Pi’s official project says the Mark II flight case was redesigned in 2021 for upgraded Astro Pi units with a more powerful Raspberry Pi, new sensors, and the Raspberry Pi High-Quality Camera. (raspberrypi.org) That means this is not just a novelty shell for your desk. If you print the case and install the hardware, Raspberry Pi says your unit will be “identical in almost every way” to the Astro Pi flight units now operating on the International Space Station. (raspberrypi.org) The miniature desktop computer leans hardest into nostalgia, because the case is modeled after an old 286-era beige personal computer instead of a modern mini computer. The MakerWorld design highlighted in search results fits a Raspberry Pi and a 3.5-inch display, and even routes the boot microSD card to a fake 5.25-inch floppy drive so swapping storage feels like changing disks in 1992. (makerworld.com, printables.com) What ties all five together is that none of them use the Pi as an invisible controller hidden behind a printer. Each one turns the Pi into the finished object itself, with the printed parts doing the job a factory-made case, cabinet, or instrument enclosure would normally do. (howtogeek.com) That is why this kind of weekend project keeps showing up in maker culture: a Raspberry Pi can run the software, and a 3D printer can make the weird one-off shape that no store would ever stock. On April 10, 2026, How-To-Geek turned that formula into a five-project menu for anyone who already has both machines sitting at home. (howtogeek.com)