enclosures

[R.G.]

http://www.industrialmetalsales.com/1994.html

[markm]

Now that looks like alot of work!

[Mark Hammer]

Taking into account losses due to cutting, a 36 inch length would get you perhaps a dozen fairly sturdy, and nicely-size boxes, which works out to about two and a half bucks @.  You still have to provide something to close the openings on the side, but the sturdiness of the channeling itself should make a wide array of inexpensive materials suitable for that.

[Toney]

Hey, nice call R.G.

There are a few neurons at the back of my brain always ticking over on the enclosure issue.

Any thoughts on providing side walls? Pop rivets/sheet metal?

[brett]

Hi.
My pot-less wah was housed in something like this, but lengthways. (2 x 4 x 10)

The "end" issue is easy - you can buy plastic "plugs" to fit most common sizes.  Alternately, you could mold your own from plastic or fibreglass.
cheers

[jonathan perez]

very large multi fx pedal.

it can be a GT8 with analog fx and less useless crap.

yikes!

[nosamiam]

The first thing that came to mind for me was a Spyder-type powersupply enclosure.  That Geofex article about the Spyder is cool, but I've searched high and low for a local source for steel framing stud with no luck at all.  That may be just what I'm looking for.  Recently, I was considering buying a 1U rack enclosure and cutting off the ears.  Roughly the same price and a little more compact, but this works out to a much better deal because you could do several from one length of tubing.

[Processaurus]

The commercial boxes in extruded aluminum enclosures always seem like everything is engineered around the point where you have to slide everything in.  The full height of pots and footswitches especially need to be taken into account.  Long offboard wires may be the price for the casual builder's sanity.  And the longer the tube, the crazier it would get.

That stuff would look hot with some wood sides, though.  Especially if you angled the top toward you a bit...

[Processaurus]

I just remembered a weird booster some one gave me that was made in a tube like that.  They did the sides by cutting a 1/4" thick rectangular piece of painted ABS plastic that just fit inside the tube.  Two small wood screws from the front and back held it in.  Easy.  Or you could get a metal shop to make you a bunch of   [   shaped metal pieces.  Or, this may be the easiest yet, maybe somewhere out there there is some L shaped metal stock that would fit just inside the tube.  Cut off a piece, and stick it in.  Then the shorter side of the L, which is facing the bottom, gets some screws to hold it from the bottom of the enclosure.

[Toney]

For a long run, surely just cutting a strip out of the bottom, leaving 12mm or so either side would be the go.

The base could then be made from flat sheet metal, drilled through wah base plate style-screws through rubber feet for access.

[R.G.]

They have 2"x4" and 5" extrusions as well.

I also like the idea of cutting a strip out of one of the 6" sides so you could mount a bottom.

Alternatively, you could cut a strip out of the top and leave maybe 8mm on each side, and make effects on single plates that bolt into the channel formed. See http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/FXRack/fxrack.pdf for this view of things.

[R.G.]

Now that I think about it, I'm not so sure I like being able to get whatever metals I want in small quantity.

As little as three years ago, it was almost impossible to get metals of any kind in small quantities except from limited stock retailers like Home Depot and salvage yards. There was only one internet metals supplier that courted small orders. There are now quite a number of them. What's making the difference? Is it that the home DIY market has suddenly expanded?

I think not. I think what's happened is the reverse. The large quantity market has dropped to almost zilch. With the movement of most mid-range manufacturing out of the USA, the metal suppliers find that they can no longer sell in truckload lots, or that when they do, they have to accept almost no profit to make the sale because of the competition. I'm sure that some are leaving the business. I know that there is a massive consolidation going on of national metal suppliers buying out regional and local ones.

I suspect that the ones that don't want to just hang up their hats are figuring out that they might be able to make a smaller living by courting the small-lot sales and selling more service than metal. One of our local suppliers, Westbrook metals had a longstanding policy that said in effect "if your order is under $250, don't clutter up the phones and order counter." They relaxed that back to "OK, we'll sell you stuff, but there's a $50 service fee under $100." a few years ago. I understand that they've now put in a showroom for their metals and will cut to size for you without a minimum order.

Part of me likes the availability, but I'm not sure I'll like what happens next as they start failing one by one. There are not enough of us hackers to keep many of them going.

[donald stringer]

I think that I would go with the tilted wooden ends and drop in tops. It would be easy enough to to route an pocket for the alum tube to fit in. We have an alum. extrusion co. we do work for from time to time and every time I go over there I am always keeping an eye out for special extrusion order drop cut offs [you have to catch them at the right time though]