Rig enclosures

[Radion]

Hi all, we’re do people get there rig enclosures from?

[yellowbeard]

https://www.vandijkenelektronica.nl (Change the lingo to English!)
These I find are good and cheap. They are out of stock of their "simple aluminium boxes" at the moment, they usually have big ones for €8.50. They do have 2U 19 inch rack cases for €25 ifn you're making something nice...

[Albert H]

Most of my gear goes into standard 19" rack boxes.

If I want to build something else, I have bending bars, and fold my own aluminium boxes!

[radionortheast]

19inch rack mount would look good under the tv next to the games console, how to bus as the old radioneck would say!. I used to have a 19inch one from pcs, it did look good, they were smaller, don’t think you can get them anywhere, not much deeper than the boards inside which made them neat. I’ve no experience of leaving anything out in the field, other than tiny bugs, sjv they use the barah enclosure for the am, fm transmitter, you could probably get a better quality fm transmitter from alli none chip based put it inside one of those, they have plastic on the front and back. I made a transmitter into a plastic box from amazon lately, it was only 1.5w, they do have expensive 19inch ones, I would use plastic on the front, metal is quite hard to work with, will take forever if you’ve got a display.

[jvok]

I got a load of scrap 480w psus from work a while back when they ordered the wrong ones and couldn't send them back. They're cheap crap so ive been tearing the pcbs out and building rigs in them. Ones like this: https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005005707518840.html I use 2 psus and put the driver in one and the pa in the other, with a coax in between.

I got them free but even at £20 each theyre cheaper than most boxes these days

[Albert H]

Years ago, I bought loads of cheap car battery chargers from Halfords. They had chunky mains transformers in them (which could be rectified and smoothed to power rigs up to about 80 Watts), plenty of space, a heatsink (OK for a driver stage) and a nice folded steel case! I dipped the cases in cobalt blue paint (a sort of trademark at the time), then drilled out the holes for the sockets and controls. The rig PCBs were simply bolted inside, with the top lid acting as part of the heatsink for the output transistor(s). They came with mains leads into them through a grommet, a power switch and there was a crude ammeter movement that could easily be replaced with a more useful one to indicate SWR and forward power! I usually just left the ammeter in place, but disconnected. There was even a chromed handle on the top to carry it with!