Fireboard Case

For those that don’t know what a FireBoard is… It’s a Wifi/bluetooth enabled remote temperature probe for BBQ Pits. It supports up to 6 temperature probes and can monitor both the pit temperature and meat temperature.

They’re not cheap, and as such, I don’t want to just store the thing in a cardboard box.

The plan is to carve storage out of a chunk of wood and then mount that inside a nice wooden box.

Today’s goal was to simply test the design of the pockets to make sure all the parts fit. The next goal will be to do the same but in a much nicer hunk of wood. I’m thinking I’ll use Iroko wood for the inlay/carved portion and then cypress for the box itself. Why these woods? Well… it’s because it’s what I have.

Please ignore the rough cut for the pocket that the charger sits in. This was my first cut since the move and I discovered that some of the bolts had worked their way loose. Some moron didn’t use nylock nuts on the bolts holding the spindle to the machine and they vibrated loose and dropped the spindle into the workpiece.

The final box will have foam glued into the lid to help keep the parts from slipping out of the pockets. The test cuts show I need to make the pocket for the device itself just a tad larger in the X direction, but everything else looks good.

I’ll update as I make progress. I’m thinking I’ll try to V-carve the name of the device into the top of the lid.

Those spools for the temperature probes seem useful too. I have a cheesier version and all the parts are just flopping around in a drawer. This is a good idea.

The spools are from thingiverse. Search for Fireboard probe holder.

My last boss had something similar for his big green egg. I think it has a fan control as well to kinda regulate the heat? Super cool idea, I love the idea of nerding up the BBQ a bit. I am head over heals in love with my sous vide and searing grill combo.

Let me know when dinner will be ready and I’ll be half an hour early at least.

I have a Meater and it came with it’s own wooden block. :slight_smile: I don’t have the big one with multi probes. My smoker came with it’s own probes and WiFi…

After all the issues I had with my MPCNC with broken parts and bad cuts, I finally have the next phase of this project done. I have the insert machined out of solid Iroko. The wood is super hard and took a few tries to get a good cut.

I broke the insert into two parts. I split the wood in half. The top half got a full cut through the wood and the second half got the pockets. This worked a lot better and faster than if I had tried to mill the pockets all the way from the top.

Once the two parts were milled, I glued them back together. I used a 1/8" bit for the cuts in the top plate and a 1/4" end mill for the pocket in the bottom. There’s a small reveal in the corners due to the different bit sizes, but it’s ok.

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I built most of the rest of the box over the weekend. Used the laser engraver to burn the logo onto the top of the box. I still don’t have the feed rates correct as you can see some of the logo didn’t burn. I also ran into an issue towards the right side of the logo where one of the steppers wasn’t going the full number of steps and was clicking. I didn’t catch what was going on, but I have a feeling one of the wires was catching on the corner of the machine keeping it from moving the full amount. I’ve had this happen before.

The plan at this point is to hit it with a torch to give it a burned look and then a couple of coats of poly. I have hardware on the way to finish it off later this week.

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Finally finished my box.

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A coworker got a fireboard for Christmas. He’s a woodworker as well and asked me for my design drawings for my case. I offered to cut him the insert on the mpcnc.

I redid the gcode using F360’s PP. I’ll be cutting it tomorrow. Most of the cuts I’ve done recently have shown that the new upgrades should produce a better part than what is in my box. We’ll see.

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The insert is almost done cutting. Iroko is a pretty hard wood, so I tend to cut it slower to reduce chatter.

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And two hours of pocketing later, the insert is done. This one came out nicer than mine :confused:

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Great now I need to upgrade my heatermeter case.

Anyone else notice the more time they spend on this forum the harder it gets to get through the project list?

Not really. You just learn to prioritize. I’ve started using Trello for tracking projects and it’s helped a lot.

This insert did jump in line in front of a the other projects because it’s for someone else.