DIY FLIGHTCASES

I do not like the normal flightcases

I do not like the stupid handles they are supplied with. even a rack full of lightweight smps amps are awkward

Instead i am going to build myself so new racks out of ply with 2 butterfly catches either side and 4 rubber feet.

I want to use the same handles as this pic of mikey bears racks

forum.speakerplans.com/topic3904 ... tml#394864

i realise it wont be cost effective

any tips?

i was thinking of the wisabirch which was a resin bonded face that is used as exterior flooring

you would save yourself a packet building your own........ it is more cost effective than buying them. The only real cost is ply, i would spray paint them though........ butterfly Hinges x4, feet x4 and rack mounting strips x2, small tub of speaker paint. you could get all this for less than £80.00 ish. To buy a rack your looking at £150.00 plus minimum..........

For a real differant look you could stain the ply any colour you want then varnish...... i should of posted some pics i built 1 mixer/cd case and 1 amp rack a few months back for a friend i stained the ply blue, then sprayed that girls hair spray glitter stuff over the boxes (silver and gold), then sprayed over that with varnish. They looked well good in a kinda retro way.

If you haven't got patterns for the bits, make sure you buy all the fittings first, so that you can dimension the box mechanically around the fittings. Buy large butterfly catches, large corners etc., small fittings are sometimes weaker.

If you don't like your flightcases you should find a better supplier!

I'm doing evening shifts at the moment for a mate who's just received an order for 950 flightcases. Spent friday evening drilling the holes for the castors on 35 cases (that's 560 10mm holes through 21mm of ply each!) then we had to t-nut them all (luckily got some help with them).

CNC machine is arriving next week which should speed up some of the process

I hope you drilled the holes straight.

Fairly straight. The drill bit isn't quite as sharp as it was when I started!

Although the template for the holes is well used, I'm sure it originally had 10mm holes, they're more like 13mm now so there's a bit of margin for error.

The quantities of materials just gets astronomical when you start doing big batches of cases. Especially on things like rivets. (As I'm sure you know Tony)

if you need help with the cnc machine let me know

i hope you ordered a second head for drilling work powered by a air pistion, screws wear quickly for drilling

Chris, the most flight cases I was involved in at one time was 26. They were for Bill Kelsey, when he worked at Electrosound. We had made the cases within the week and friday we had to do an all-nighter for delivery on sat morning. 3 of us trimmed the cases and pulled around 9000 rivets. a day or so later, my right arm swelled up and took three weeks to go down. That was due to rivet trigger finger. Since then, I've had paint gun finger. When will it end.

smiley32 thats one big job, good luck with it.......

I'm just a very small part of this job, I don't usually build flightcases except for myself but it's a case of all hands to the pumps. There's about 8 people working full time on the order.