Mechanical Details

Lots of folks have asked my questions about how the case is made.

The case will be changing to support the off-board PA!

I got a 12" X 24" sheet of aluminum from Speedy Metals, the BOM calls out 0.040" T6061 but that was to keep the price under $200. If you have a few extra dollars go for the 0.050" or even the 0.062" (actually the prices seem to fluctuate, at the time of writing this, 0.062" is cheaper than 0.050" or 0.040").

Using a shear, cut the panel like this (also in the DSP-610 Chassis Panels.pdf file below):

If you don't have a shear, find a local machine shop or a shop class at the high school, don't even try to cut it with a saw.

If you are planning on building the off-board PA don't cut the sheet like this, I'm planning on shortening the rear panel and extending the top and bending it so that some of the rear paned connectors (antennas and power) will be mounted on the same piece of aluminum as the PA PCB.

The 3/8" square stock is used to make the corner pieces. They are 1" long and have 2 #4 thru holes in one side, a #4 tapped thru hole in the top and a #4 tapped blind hole in one end, like this:

Eight of these are used to build the enclosure, four are attached through the #4 non tapped holes using #4 bolts, nuts and lock washers, to each of the two side panels. The tapped holes in the ends are used to attach the front and rear panels and the other tapped holes provide mounting for the top and bottom panels. The configuration that uses the off-board PA will only use 6 of them and some other arrangement for the rear panel/top panel interface.

The DSP-610 Panel Drill Templates.pdf file contains 1:1 drawings for each of the panels which can be used to center punch the holes and mark the rectangular cutout for the LCD display.

The last page in the file has the labels that can be used to make the decals. Print the last page using s laser printer onto decal paper which is available from various sources one of which is Micromark (if the link is dead, goto micromark.com and search). I wouldn't recommend the inkjet version because inkjet ink is water soluable and IMHO doesn't work very well with the decals.