Re: A thought on enclosures - G10 FR4

[Andrew Bingham <abin...@gmail.com>]

Actually, paper-based Grade XX Phenolic would be about 1/2 the cost of G-10.  I get about $60 in raw material cost for a case with a design that could be epoxied together at home reasonably well.

On Thursday, June 4, 2015 at 10:36:40 PM UTC-7, Andrew Bingham wrote:

Several people have asked about different S-100 enclosure options.  Custom enclosures are often time consuming to get, heavy to ship, etc.

There was an article on Hackaday about making enclosures from FR4 PCB board - http://hackaday.com/2015/06/03/how-to-build-beautiful-enclosures-from-fr4-aka-pcbs/  While I think doing it with etched-copper clad board and a soldering iron as shown in the Hackaday pieces is not really an option for an enclosure large enough for S-100 systems (and a waste of copper board) - plain G-10 FR4 is readily available.

One could purchase a single 36"x36"x0.093" piece of black G-10 FR4 (http://www.eplastics.com/G10BLK-093X36X36) and cut it into the pieces required to make a 17x17x7" enclosure, and still have about a 5"x36" section of material left to make card guides, drive cages, etc.  5-minute epoxy from the store could be used to bond the pieces into the final configuration.  With a simple PCB mill like the X-Crave, holes, ports, etc could be added (and maybe groves to guide fitting the pieces together).

An advantage here would be if someone made a kit, the G-10 pieces could be shipped flat-packed similar to the way we ship our PCBs and the epoxy purchased locally at a hardware store by the builder.  Thus avoiding the shipping costs of a heavy and volumetrically large metal enclosure, which end up being a significant portion of the cost of any hobby enclosure project.

Andrew