I wanted to ruggedize David's board so that I don't have to worry so much about ESD, dropping it, cat hair, and all the other fun stuff that seems to cause problems with electronics. I decided to use an extruded aluminum enclosure made by Box Enclosures. These are available from Newark Electronics for reasonable prices. This was on the high side because of the size, however I am very pleased. The box comes with both Phillips and Torx screws. In this case they were black screws and match the anodizing nicely.

Because nobody seems to build boards that follow standard sizes, I had to buy an over-sized box. This proved to be handy because now I can build a small 5 volt regulated supply and put it all inside the same container as the PCB. I had to spend a little more money on pigtails between the end plates and the PCB but no biggie. This buys me flexibility should I decide to modify things. I'm not soldering coax directly to the board.

The BCD thumb wheel switch was intentionally mounted to the far right to hide the areas that were filed away to accomodate the little pins sticking out of the side. The pins are used for stacking these switches should more than one be required for a project. It was a nice coincidence that the SMA connector on the board directly next to it is the one that it controls. The BNC to SMA pigtails would easily let me change the order if this was not the case.

The panels were machined on my CNC mill. I plan to go back and engrave labels for each connector at a later date.

^Front^

^Back^

^David Partridge's frequency divider board^

^Misc. parts^

BNC female, SMA male, RG174 pigtail $3.20 ea.
Thumb wheel BCD switch $10.00 ea.
Paddle Switch from RadioShack $3.19 ea.

^I had to file the corners to make them square as well as little notches so the pins on the BCD switch fit through the slot^

^ These are the slots in the Box Enclosures extruded aluminum chassis for sliding in PCBs ^

^ This is an example of a standard 100mm wide (Eurocard width) board sliding into another case for a different project ^

This is EXTREMELY handy. This project requires me to cut some aluminum or perfboard to fit the box, then mount the PCB to the cut material.

I can't stress enough how much I like these enclosures. They run anywhere from about $8 to $40 depending on size. They come in a nice range of colors. I tend to use red for power amplifiers, blue for preamps, etc.