Hi John, I have to agree with you about enclosures. They make the difference between a DIY unit and a nice commercial unit, but they are very expensive. The enclosures I use are about $20 each from Mouser. But the end panels are another $20 each: milled front and back. So, that's $60 per unit. One suggestion I might make is to check into what it would cost to make the end panels from circuit board. At volume, it might be significantly cheaper that $20 per panel. Learning KICAD well enough to make an end panel isn't that difficult.
OSHPark has better prices on larger volume orders. Off the cuff without looking, I think I pay about $19 per mainboard for an order of 10, so that would probably work out to $15 for a pair of PCB end panels. That's still $35 per enclosure, though. You'd probably need to order 15 of each to meet their minimums. There are other suppliers that have better prices, but I have no experience with them or their costs. It wouldn't be as nice as milled aluminum, but it should work just as well. Bob ----------------------------------------------------------------- AE6RV.com GFS GPSDO list: groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GFS-GPSDOs/info From: John Ackermann N8UR <j...@febo.com> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement <time-nuts@febo.com> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 8:13 AM Subject: Re: [time-nuts] TTimelab question I really like the setup that Mark is describing. As to TAPR's plans, we've found that enclosures are a challenge -- metalwork is pretty expensive unless you get significant volume, and in our niche market, that's hard to do. But I am hoping to find an inexpensive clamshell-type enclosure with flat front and rear panels, and then do up designs (perhaps with Front Panel Express) for those panels. That can be done at a reasonable cost, and at a minimum we can make design files available so people can order their own panels. For my own use, I'm also going to do a couple of 2U rack enclosures -- one to hold two TICCs operating independently, and another for the "megaTICC" -- four units slaved together to make an 8 channel counter, with a Raspberry Pi controller along the line of what Mark described. (In multi-board mode, each TICC outputs on its own USB line, so the RPi's main purpose is to deal with the 8 channels of data from 4 USB connections.) I'll make the design files for those enclosures available as well, but it may be a while as my entire lab is now packed up as we are in the final stages of moving from Atlanta back to Dayton. Also, in a day or three I'll be announcing a simple project that sprung out of the TICC assembly and testing process that some of you might find useful. We're still finalizing details on that. John _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.