What kind of suppliers have you been working with...?!
Last time I had an enclosure made, I scratched up some basic drawings by hand, brought them to a small local fabricator, they charged I think $200ish /ea (gosh, that'd be more like $300 now) for time and materials, and boom, I had five sets or whatever of the thing. Would've been a 10 x 16 x 7"-ish box with a couple interior panels. Forget if that was a two-C-shape assembly or one five-side box with cover or-- no, it had a faceplate at least, it could've only been four at most; but yeah, they figured it out and it worked great.
It pays to have some basic knowledge of drafting. Not even to the point of like GD&T (geometric dimensioning & tolerancing) but to know what lines to draw where, in what weight (heavy = outline, light = feature e.g. edge of a face, bend line, dashed = hidden i.e. backside light line), and the spacial awareness to draw it from multiple angles and use sections to eliminate ambiguity.
Nowadays, you would be best designing it in SolidWorks, Fusion360, etc., using sheet metal commands (cut, bend, drill, etc.), and sending the file directly to a fab -- there are numerous online fabs that do this, even one-stop sources like PCBWay these days. You might check for one local-ish (same or neighboring state, say) to save on shipping or ease communication if anything needs to be done in person.
If you don't have the mech software and how to drive it, of course this gets more difficult, but you can always ask several shops if they'll make sense of your chicken scratch, maybe even have them turn it into models for you -- or hire someone for the same task, which should be pretty straightforward, and you can ask for clarification and tolerancing in the process, making sure everything is sensibly sized, fits together, tolerances are achievable, etc. Doesn't even need to be the service of an ME, but an ME might be able to do it faster / more accurately than a more informal / hobby / novice type.
It's probably harder nowadays to find local suppliers, than it used to be. The internet is clogged up with SEO and generated results. You can scroll for dozens of pages looking for anything smaller than an international supplier -- someone who's actually only interested in big bucks and production quantities and will jerk around little players until they pay up or leave for something else. More traditional discovery methods may be necessary to fall back on. Location searching at least can help, but also consider ye olde Yellow Pages (well, maybe not, they're commodified too these days, aren't they?...who actually has a phone book anymore?), or similar methods. Check newspaper ads in local areas? Check maps. I don't think there's a trade association that might index such suppliers, but that also works for certain kinds of business. And, if you post state/region, you might get tips here. Or really even just stateside in general, shipping smaller packages across the country doesn't cost extra.
As for the rackmount:
The cost seems ludicrous, and, I don't really know how much stuff you have packed into the thing, but just for point of reference, a typical empty box runs $100 e.g.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bud-industries/CH-14404/428959 and you can just drill all the holes yourself if it's simple, support boards/panels on standoffs, that sort of thing. Step up would be drilling holes more precisely and pressing in inserts -- or getting a shop to do it, and next after that would be, take these basic outlines and make me a custom with x-y-z features, panels, etc. included. Like, some things like slots and precise large holes/openings will be much easier to do, particularly in production (laser or CNC punch) on flat sheet, than modifying an already-bent box, and a shop so equipped will know how best to do it.
Tim
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
