Custom Enclosures - Experience/Advice?

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:15:29 -0800 (PST), tomcees snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com Gave us:

Much cheaper to buy from china.

Usually that are an extrusion with end plates where you make the needed cut-outs. Especially at the eval level. Holes in the side of the extrusion are rare, but also completely doable by the end user (you).

US makers are usually prohibitively expensive, especially in short quantities.

The chinese folks will sell you a single unit or ten pieces.

We recently bout ten of a box that takes up about half a rack width at about 2U in ht. Shorter depth but still, they send the side plates and screws and end plates, etc. all together in one shipment. It was pretty heavy, considering it was all Aluminum. Side plates are extrusions with round slots at the top and bottom running the whole length. The end plates screw into those round slots with threaded machine screws, but sheet metal screws would also have worked. The hex heads were just more decorative.

I can't remember what we paid for them. It was months ago.

US?

ctors on 3 or 4 of the edges.

One neat hack is to buy extruded an aluminum case, then make the panels/end plates out of PCB. Just add what you need onto the side(s) of the PCB you are having made anyway. Most board houses don't charge extra for routing, so it's a cheap way to make custom panels. Soldermask comes in a variety of colors, you get the silk screening to label ports, looks half-way profes sional, etc.

Here is an example of what I mean:

For small runs it's best to design around an off the shelf enclosure, such as those from Pactec. For numerous reasons, that probly don't apply in this case.

Another idea is to just make a aluminum hog out type of box. Not exactly cheap, but if your already commited on the Board then its an option.

I perfer the first option, because procurement and assembly becomes easy.

Just watch out, the Machinist's don't like the plastic cases because of the setup issues.

Cheers

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 09:39:32 -0800 (PST), DemonicTubes Gave us:

That is actually pretty darn cool. Downright demonic!

It is a great idea. Often my boards are more than 2 layers and I'd hate to pay 4 or 6 layer prices for end panels. But 2 layer boards are not expensive from OSHpark and I think they have 2 layer runs each week now, so not slow. He uses a goofy purple solder resist though, so no black. I guess there are plenty of other sources for inexpensive 2 layer boards or maybe even 1 sided.

Friends of mine have used:

- Rich S.

polycase.com -- my favorite