Improvised project cases ?

[60 oldjohn]

What products are reasonably cheap to buy and have a useful case that can be used to house your project. Years ago it was Tobacco tins. I have used a snuff tin for a PW project around 1974, bought the tin and binned the contents! Tic tac may be one, any more?

I should add, this is not only a cost cutting exercise often the right size of enclosure is not available.

John.

[kellys_eye]

If you are reasonably handy with a few wood working tools then pick up a packet of laminate flooring and some 6mm x 6mm soft wood beading.

The choice of finishes is enormous and one pack of flooring goes an awful long way! Some flooring is as cheap as £5/sq metre. All you need is the skill to cut a straight line (and if you can achieve a 45 degree chamfer you get an almost seam-free finish).

I have, in the past, purchased old equipment just to recycle the cases they were in - mainly 19" rack cabinets that could be bought for £10 (usual auction places) and the component parts of which would normally cost £100's.

[paulsherwin]

Redundant electronic items supply my project cases - Freeview boxes, routers etc.

[Nickthedentist]

I used to use the 1960's, orange Agfa slide boxes when I was building power supplies as a kid in the 1980's.

[Skywave]

I often use copper laminate board and copper tape to make boxes to house small projects. A try square, pencil, ruler and a hot soldering iron + solder is all that is required. Ideal for RF applications: good screening; easy to cut & drill holes; easy to make earth connections. And, in actual point of fact, I'm in the process of making one right now!

Al.

[Refugee]

I found a place selling retro alarm clocks that have mostly empty space in them apart from an AA battery holder. You get a case with a working clock on the front. They were a couple of quid.
Broken packs of laminate flooring can be had for as little as £2 some times.
Set top boxes are good too.
I used an aircraft battery box for a Variac power supply with a laminate floor front.

[Karen O]

If you want a nice wooden case and, like me, your woodwork efforts look like shipping crates, then you can do a lot worse than a wooden bread bin. These are going out of fashion and can be picked up for very little sterling at car boot sales. Pros: attractive, could be stained/varnished. Cons: tend to have thick sides which makes mounting things difficult.

My breadbin creations are legendary in the NBTVA. As a friend said: 'you don't breadboard your projects, you breadbin them!'

Another source of wooden case is those pointless egg cupboards that are on sale in some homewares departments. Rip the door off and replace with an aluminium or plastic panel and voila!

[CambridgeWorks]

Old printer switch boxes are pretty redundant these days and often seen in rummage boxes at car boots. Most are steel and quite solid. Use blank pcb, plastic sheet or whatever else to cover the D shaped holes when connectors are removed.
Rob

[60 oldjohn]

Some good ideas, I was thinking more of small 10cm or less in size, the type of box I could go into a shop buy and possibly use the contents all at an affordable price. I have bought boxes in the past only to find internal mouldings and structures reduce the internal size making them unusable for that project. For the larger sizes I have been lucky in the past and found electronic items with usable cases.


John.

[Karen O]

I may be wrong, but it seems that packaging has been economised to the point that it rarely provides a satisfactory project box these days. Manufacturers of packaging just don't think about us constructors and hobbyists! I recall those plastic boxes that held photographic slides, those that packs of cards came in (the sort featuring cars etc. for kids). Even a plastic pencil case made a decent project case. That all seems to have gone now.

I've only one suggestion: card index boxes. Often, the two halves can be separated to make potentially two cases, provided you supply the missing lid.

[David G4EBT]

Because most of my projects are homebrew - often items of simple test gear - some years ago I thought it would be nice to give them a 'retro' feel and build them into comb-jointed oak or mahogany boxes just as test gear and crystal sets of yesteryear were. Hence, I built a simple comb-joint jig to use with a cheap router. I've tended to do that for other small projects such as the mini-mod. It enables bespoke boxes to be made when metal or ABS boxes of the correct size can't be found, let alone at a sensible price. I've featured them from time to time in forum threads.

That said, it can sometimes take longer to make the enclosure than the contents!

But for those for whom woodworking isn't a hobby, rarely is timber available in the right size or thickness, let along cheap or free. Over the years, I've managed to scavenge mahogany, iroko and oak - often from old furniture, which I've been able to cut to thickness on my band-saw and to sand on a belt sander to 6mm thick.

Fine for woodworkers, and only basic skills are called for to achieve a reasonable result, but not very helpful to those who don't have a router, bandsaw, belt sander and PPE such as a proper face mask, eye protection and ear defenders. Not a realistic or cost-effective prospect for anyone without such equipment.

As to using laminate flooring offcuts, I've not found any that are useful because - as the name infers - they're laminates, consisting of a thin layer of veneer attached to a substrate, which seems to be either MDF, poor quality timber or some sort of resin. You can get solid wooden flooring though, and I was lucky enough to get some offcuts of 'gunstock oak' a while back.

By using a jig, accurately fitting joints are achieved with little skill and at least to my eyes, it makes presentable boxes that might even deserve the term 'cabinet! The first pic below shows two pieces of wood comb-jointed and pushed together, but not glued up or sanded, the second was a test piece to check the closeness of the joint fit, the third pic is of a 'Coil Coverage Test Unit' developed from a 'Suggested Circuit' from July 1969 Radio Constructor, the fourth is a Mini-Mod and the last one, a Zener diode tester. Zero cost when your time comes free, but if you're not into woodwork, it's just a chore you could do without.

There are countless videos on youtube of comb-joint jigs using either a router or a table saw.

Comb-jointing isn't the only show in town - as I said earlier, it seemed to me a way of giving a 'retro feel' but it's perfectly possible of course to mitre corners of boxes or to glue and pin them, and it would be nice to see some examples. When our two sons (now aged 50 and 54) were children, I made all sorts of wooden toys for them such as farms, forts, garages etc, all with glue and pins with no power tools in sight.

Hope that's of interest.

Ferrero Rocher chocolates come in a quite strong rounded cuboid plastic boxes of various sizes. I think it is polystyrene. They are clear, a quick coat of paint on the inside gives a fantastic finish. And the contents are rather good, so says SHMBO.

[paulsherwin]

For those without David's skills and facilities, small wooden boxes are often available from charity shops and flea markets for a pound or two.

[Terry_VK5TM]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

Fine for woodworkers, and only basic skills are called for to achieve a reasonable result, but not very helpful to those who don't have a router, bandsaw, belt sander and PPE such as a proper face mask, eye protection and ear defenders. Not a realistic or cost-effective prospect for anyone without such equipment.

A local Men's Shed could be a viable proposition to have small wood boxes made.

https://menssheds.org.uk/

We do this sort of thing regularly and only charge a small fee plus cost of materials (or you could of course join up and have access to the needed tools to do it yourself).

[Refugee]

It was back in 2012 when I was building my bench that they cleared the laminate flooring department out. There was a pack of solid oak and several with ply substrate.
I used recycled doors for the framework.

[Omegaman]

Colmans mustard tins make nice housings for small projects. They also make convincing replicas of the TCC type paper caps when sprayed grey with a modern cap inside.

[emeritus]

For a small white plastic box, Toolstation do a 32mm deep PVC a double socket box for £1.10 and a double cover plate for £0.49 (codes 53434 and 83635, page 491 of the current catalogue).

[Richard_FM]

I've used small cardboard boxes for a few projects, especially then the flaps were folded to close and didn't need taping.

[Ambientnoise]

An Amazon search for “empty tins” gives some useful looking results.

Ken

[Terry_VK5TM]

How about "Mint Tins", about the same size as the infamous Altoids tin I believe?

Google shows quite a large number of UK companies producing them as promotional items (one example here https://www.4imprint.co.uk/product/4...lous-Mint-Tins), so the empty ones must turn up somewhere.