Putting the cart before the horse.

[Biggles]

I may be the only one to experience this, but I was wondering if it happens to anyone else. Basically, instead of completing a project of some description, then looking round for a suitable case or enclosure to house it in, I sometimes see a nice new unused and empty case or box in my shed, and think "now what could I build to fit in that?" And from then on the seed of a project is sown. It's a kind of strange reverse approach, and maybe it's particular to my way of thinking. (Un?)fortunately I often collect cases and enclosures, so always have a comprehensive collection available for when that moment arrives.
Alan.

[G8UWM-MildMartin]

I hope you are not alone, but I must admit to giving up once a project is working. Various Chinese clock kits, and frequency counters and component measurers/ analysers that would be really useful once fitted in suitable housings are, sadly, just lying around gathering dust. Maybe, when I retire, I'll try to do justice to some with cases inspired by David G4EBT's superb examples, even though nowhere as good.

[Radio Wrangler]

He's not alone...

David

[John10b]

I did exactly what Biggles did. I had an old empty box, a couple of old speakers and fitted a Bluetooth module with audio amp inside and now have a very decent System to listen to my music stored on my iPhone.
Cheers
John

[Beardyman]

I do that (enclosure first then project that is) a lot!
Where I work they often discard 19" rack cases of various U height combinations, if nothing else they are useful for the metal!

[jeremy_pdx]

I suspect a lot of us do that. I once salvaged part of an old McMichael 135 cabinet that was on its way to the skip, because I thought it was too beautiful for that fate and would make a good housing for something or other. Now, I'm still trying to figure out whether it will become a custom guitar amp or extension speakers for one of my other radio projects.

[boxdoctor]

During my teen years (1950s), there was a plethora of ex-service equipment in nice metal boxes on the surplus market for what, in today's prices, would be 10s of pence a piece, which could not be put to practical use as it was. These were frequently bought for "future projects" on the basis of being cheap, looking like they had some useful bits in them, and, importantly, the least number of holes already in the front panel.
An idea for a project would be eventually conceived, and would be built in one of these.
This often also resulted in minor finger/hand injuries due to the use of inadequate or inappropriate metalworking tools due to lack of funds. ("Pocket money" was very hard to come by!)
No veroboard or plastic boxes in those days. Plastic boxes would have probably melted with the heat of the valves anyway!

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by Biggles

I may be the only one to experience this, but I was wondering if it happens to anyone else. (etc.)

Indeed it does: to me. I seem to have acquired a collection of all sorts of 'containers': metal, wood & plastic. The temptation to have a clear-out is occasionally strong, but then the oh-so familiar "Ah! One day that might just be useful!" kicks in. Creativity is a blessing, but can also be a curse.

Al.

[John10b]

Very true Al, if it wasn’t for my wife, who gives my shed,ops, workshop a clean I would be surrounded by all sorts of boxes etc etc.
Cheers
John

[mark_in_manc]

Boxes are just the sort of thing one can sling under the floor when one runs out of shed space. I'm still flexible enough to get down there, just about

I found some sheets of something somewhere in-between hardboard and ply a while back, with quite a reasonable veneered face. It turns out to butt-join to itself quite adequately, and all sorts of boxes have resulted!

[Refugee]

Laminate flooring makes quite good cabinets and panels.
I replaced an entire kitchen ceiling with it where the original would have been fibre tiles.
Those must have been a grease magnet.
My Variac unit has a laminate floor front panel too.

[Radio Wrangler]

Wanting to build a cabinet for a big power supply in my teens (get enough power and the glory will look after itself...) I enquired of a local scrapyard about aluminium sheet.

"There's some over there, down the bottom of the yard, I think."

There was. Nice stuff, already primed. The far side turned out to be painted.... Yellowy cream with the Huddersfield coat of arms. That sheet had once been the face of a classic trolleybus. On some internet groups I'd be lynched for having once turned a Huddersfield trolleybus into a home-made PSU.

David

[Biggles]

Ah, now that's comforting. I see I am not alone. Must be a bit of a thing with avid constructors. Useful sized boxes sometimes look too nice to spoil by drilling. Especially when you make a mistake and put a hole in the wrong place. Sadly, aluminium enclosures at a decent price are becoming scarce. I am not a great fan of ABS boxes, but at least they are easy to work. Recently I have taken to bending my own chassis from sheet aluminium. My skills don't extend to making decent boxes though. RW's tale of scrapyard finds reminds me of once going to the local scrapyard years ago when I lived in Penrith, trying to find some stainless steel sheet for my motorbike. I was directed to a promising looking large sheet in a corner until I pulled it out and realised it had been a urinal from a public toilet. No thanks, I think I will give that one a miss!
Alan.

[martin.m]

My problem is the other way round. I have about half a dozen good working valve radio and radiogram chassis that I can't bear to scrap. Besides, some of them are works of art (to my eyes anyway). They could really do with putting into cabinets of some sort but my woodworking skills are rubbish. The original cabinets were disposed of due to severe woodworm, general damage and lack of house room.

[G6Tanuki]

I'm generally the other way round: focus on getting-it-working rather than what-it-looks-like.

OK, 807s and QQV06/40As with 750V on the exposed anode-connectors are a risk to the naiive, but puting-stuff-in-boxes always in my mind raises issues of heat-dissipation/cooling ]meaning VFO-drift[ and the potential problems of detuning and eddy-currents when you bring a piece of metal closer than 2x the diameter of a tank-circuit.

Wood's not my case-material of choice - apart from being entirely useless as a means to construct RF-tight enclosures it's also a fire-risk! Expanded-aluminium mesh is more my thing [cuts with tinsnips, allows the air to circulate, gives decent RF screening...]

[Robert Gribnau]

Probably more common: If I build something with a metal chassis, I let the available chassis more or less dictate my designs. An example: I had this chassis with name plates "E80F" and E81L" at the two openings for tubes. So I have made a little guitar amp with it.

Like G6Tanuki I never put enclusures around my projects, not so much because of heat issues but rather because I like to put my energy and time in new projects (and I do not have children nor pets).

Greetings,
Robert

[Argus25]

Originally Posted by Biggles

I may be the only one to experience this, but I was wondering if it happens to anyone else. Basically, instead of completing a project of some description, then looking round for a suitable case or enclosure to house it in, I sometimes see a nice new unused and empty case or box in my shed, and think "now what could I build to fit in that?"

I do that sometimes if the enclosure is inspiring enough to prompt it. I find I'm not that happy with the quality of a lot of instrument cases, I'm a bit of a fuss pot over them.

However there is one brand that is so outstanding & wonderful that if you have their cases/enclosures it will inspire you to make a myriad of beautiful things in them. These are of course the Japanese Takachi enclosures (check out their website). I've attached a photo of some I got recently.

http://www.takachi-enclosure.com

The one on the left is a UC series case which is made out of folded extruded 3mm thick aluminium. They come in the light grey/white or anodized in a colour they call bronze, its a dark green. There are multiple size options. The other case has die cast aluminium front corners, very thick extruded sides and panels, optional carry handle still in the package, see in photo, sorry its blurry. And they have tilt feet options.

It is just impossible to beat the Japanese attention to detail, surface finish, & precision fit parts. Takachi are the master enclosure makers on our planet currently. And you should see they way these are packaged and wrapped.

Also their front & rear panel finishes are fantastic and always coated with protective plastic. The options include internal sub-chassis as well. Unfortunately RS only stocks a very limited range of their enclosures.

Takachi also sell direct from their factory and you can pay by payapl

(The only enclosures that I have ever seen getting close to these for quality were the ones made in the past by Elma in Switzerland)

[stuarth]

I too sometimes have a case which begs out to be used for something.

Many (many) years age I had a marketing freebie from, I think, West Hyde Developments, of a tiny plastic model of their instrument cases, the type where, at the front, the top slightly overhangs the bottom. This model of a case is about the height of a 50 pence piece.

I had to find an instrument to put in this case!

I also had a tiny moving coil meter of the type used in the Philips portable reel to reel tape recorder, the one with 3" spools on top, produced before they went onto compact cassettes.

So, putting the two parts together, I made a tiny multimeter, for a while my second smallest multimeter. It had ranges of 1.5, 15, and 150V DC, 30 and 300V AC, 150mA DC, and a single resistance range.

I cheated, and took advantage of the tiny meter's poor resolution to make the 30/300V AC ranges the same as the 15/150V DC ranges. The AC voltage ranges used a conventional half wave rectifier where a germanium diode fed the meter, and a second reverse diode restricted the PIV across the germanium diode - but I made this second diode an LED. Then with AC at the test terminals, the meter deflects, and the LED lights up. With DC, either the meter deflects, or the LED lights up. With the tiny meter, I could assume a 2:1 ratio between DC and AC ranges, the error not being discernible of such a small meter scale.

The 1.5V (DC only) range was also the 150mA range, useful for testing batteries.

The resistance range used a button cell, and an internal preset for ohms zero setting, again taking advantage of the tiny meter and the relative voltage stability of button cells.

Range selection was by moving the test leads to different 2mm sockets, actually monitor sockets on the Veroboard it was all built on, and the whole thing only had 5 sockets, one common and 4 range sockets.

It proved quite useful for many repairs on solid state HiFis, it's surprising how often you only need a rough indication of what's going on.

It was also very useful where you weren't sure whether to expect AC or DC, eg unknown wall warts, voltage across blown internal fuses, etc. In fact I've replaced the "second diode" in a Far Eastern meter with an LED so that on AC ranges it will always indicate the presence of voltage, and tell me whether it's AC, DC, or reverse DC.

I said my second smallest multimeter because I built virtually the same circuit into a stylus box with one of those tiny round "battery indicator" meters, but that was really too small to be useful.

Stuart

[dseymo1]

Only yesterday I unearthed a box in which 3.5 inch floppy disks were sold, very nicely made in heavy ABS by the look if it. My first thought was 'What will this house?'.
Takes me back to when I was a kid, saving toothpaste tube caps for use as knobs, glued onto recycled pots!
Parallel printer switchboxes are pretty much redundant these days, and can often be picked up gratis. They make fine small instrument cases.

[boxdoctor]

Originally Posted by dseymo1

Parallel printer switchboxes are pretty much redundant these days, and can often be picked up gratis. They make fine small instrument cases.

I have been looking on the net for them, as I could do with two or three for a job I'm hoping to start on soon for sombody.
I've several which I bought some years ago, but all the ones I've found in my recent searches are about £15 upwards each. The solitary hole for the switch in the front panel is no problem in this application.
Anybody seen any at a reasonable price lately? Tony.