stylish amp cases

[HuntTheShunt]

Hi all,
Any suggestions for suppliers of stylish amp cases tall enough for none toroidal transformer amps?

This seems the most difficult part of building a DIY amp the case!

[tonga]

In the UK, beyond rack mount enclosures, your pretty much stuffed as far as off the peg, good looking boxes big enough for your needs go. I've been looking for months and I'm now talking to a fabricator about getting custom cut parts for a chassis made..but it aint cheap .

Apart from that you can try and make your own but, as you rightly suggest, its not as easy as it looks.

tonga

[DocLorren]

Since my metal working skills are way below par I just design whatever case/object I like with CADCAM software (Rhinoceros 3.0; a great program by the way but not free unfortunately) and ask a local craftsman to work out the drawings. This is the semi-DIY route but the end result is just great. You could try that.

[troystg]

With the dollar being so low ( ) you could prolly order from Par-Metal, pay shipping and still get a great deal.

The series 20 cases come in all sizes, and are pretty (ok maybe not pretty, but certainly not ugly) in black.. The gold example doesn't do them justice.

I order the cases from there and then have better/thicker face panels made locally in Dallas.

http://www.par-metal.com/20series.htm

[jaycee]

Tonga is pretty much right - past 19" rackmounts there's pretty much nothing. About the best cases I've found so far are the West Hyde Image II cases which Farnell sell.

That Par-Metal case looks perfect, the only change I would make would be to countersink the 4 front screws. I may very well look into the cost of having one shipped.

[troystg]

You could also drill and tap the back side of front panel and screw in the bolts from the rear so the front would have no holes.

[ble0t]

Although it doesn't say so on the website (which by the way is badly outdated), if you ask them to, they will in fact countersink the screws for you

[jaycee]

Cool Now my only complaint is that they do everything in inches!!

I have thought about making a case though, I would have front and rear panels made by Schaeffer and then use a piece of 3mm thick steel or aluminium as a base, with two pieces of 4mm square bar or some 5x5mm angle to form side pieces, then get some aluminium bent into a U shape for the lid. The catch is, finding somewhere to purchase metal in the UK that does small orders and doesn't want a stack of money for it!

[eLarson]

multiply inches by 25.4 mm/inch and you will have everything in mm.

[sam9]

That Par-Metal case looks perfect, the only change I would make would be to countersink the 4 front screws. I may very well look into the cost of having one shipped

I did exactly that ans in addition found some stainless hex-drive flathead machine bolts that look much nicer. You can get similar bolts with a black finish as well.

For front pannels you should look at:
www.schaeffer-ag.de

For the rest of it, if you don't like the Par-metal color, just order gray paint or allodyne and have a local auto body repair shop paint it with automotive paint.

One thing to be aware of with any enclosure is whether the finish is dialectric and thus isolates one or more pannels from earth. If this happens you need to scrape the finish off at the point of contact with other pannels. This is more likely to happen with annodize or paint finish. Allodyne is, appearently, conductive.