preenfm Forum

PreenFM => PreenFM1 (the blue one) => Topic started by: Ryan on January 22, 2012, 12:54:29 PM

Title: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: Ryan on January 22, 2012, 12:54:29 PM

So I bought just the PCB and hard-to-find parts from Xavier and now I've got all the rest of the parts sourced.
I found a company here (prague) that does water jet cutting of sheet metal, so I'm now developing a metal enclosure case for Preen :) It's a bit slow going due to a new baby :D but once it's done I'll post up the drawing here for anyone else to use.

I'm trying to make it a single flat-cut sheet that can be bent by hand. It will also have wooden side panels.

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: Xavier on January 22, 2012, 11:34:44 PM

WOW... i want to see that  :D

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: Ryan on March 30, 2012, 11:04:05 PM

I've been poking this for the past few evenings and I'm finally getting somewhere with it. :)

I found a good supplier / fabricator here that does laser and water etching and cutting. They even offer a bending service that I might do also. I've been working out the folding and design of the interface. :) I couldn't resist. haha.

I've gone an extremely minimal route with it all lol. Here's the front, top and back panel sheet.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/731647/front.png)

and the bottom. I figured why not use it to show the algorithms so I worked out a graphic style to show them. It's not final as the screw holes are not there yet. I want to do a test run here in the next couple of weeks to see how everything fits. There will also be a small legend to explain the symbols. The numer of line segments in the shapes equals the number of the osc.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/731647/back.png)

It's a fun challenge to break the normal design drudge.

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: Xavier on March 31, 2012, 11:37:13 PM

 :o Ouch !!! WOW....
I LLLOOOVVVEEE it !
Please post a picture when you have a real one.
What is the file format ? Is there any online fabricator  of such metal sheet ?

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: maDMax on April 01, 2012, 11:02:53 AM

looks really great,

please keep us informed. maybe some pictures?

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: stimresp on April 02, 2012, 12:22:19 PM

Very nice design!

Will be interested to see the finished article.

Title: Re: Working on a sheet metal enclosure. :)
Post by: Ryan on April 02, 2012, 04:29:46 PM

:) It's all in Illustrator right now. There is a company here locally that does the fabrication. A student of mine has a contact there. I still need to see what kind of tolerances there are for the fine lines and stuff, but I believe it's doable. I'll post updates when I have a physical cut of it. :)

Ideally I'd like to do it on anodized or painted metal with the design etched out of the color layer, but silkscreen could also look nice. :) Glad you like it!