Re: Very cheap molded enclosures?

> This is the third or fourth post of Rich's that used "punch" for
> "drill". It took that long to seep through my poor slow brain:
>
> If you start with an enclosure with the right materials and design,
> and plan on putting a stick-on top panel then you can have the holes
> punched in one operation with a custom die. A set of dies with round
> holes should be relatively cheap. If you punch toward the inside of
> the box the holes can even be a bit ratty as long as they're clean on
> top (or at least ugly but concave) where you need to stick on the
> label. You could even have a few oblong holes (like for the ribbon
> cable from the panel) at a bit higher cost for the die.


I had a die made by http://www.acesteelruledies.com/ for work and was
very pleased. Roughly 3"x11" rectangle with 16 holes about 1" in
diameter, laser cut into hardwood with steel rules for about $100, in
about a week after I emailed them an Autocad drawing. This is to punch
foam rubber but it should work on thin acrylic or petg or ABS or ...
Call them; they were very helpful on the phone. Oh, if you send them
the material they will even do the punching for you if you don't happen
to have a press :-). That was $2.50 a piece for 50 pieces, and I'm sure
that would get better with more volume but that was all the gaskets I
needed for now and I was really tired of hand punching them :-).

Punching is always cheaper than drilling, even one hole at a time.

--
Regards,
Carl Ijames carl.ijames at verizon.net


.

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