The replacement metal panels for my old project boxs arrived today. Not a great deal you can say except they have been cut to a much higher standard than I could do in the workshop.

I had some other panels I needed so didn't actually place the order till Sunday afternoon using their website (http://www.clickmetal.co.uk/), and they arrived today; Tuesday, so two days is pretty good service in my book. The panels have a peelable protective coating on one side which is nice. All I have to do is measure and drill the mounting holes and I can then reuse those old, and rather expensive project boxs.

Because of the £10 delivery charge, it makes sense to order everything you need in one go. I think delivery is free if the order value exceeds £200 - but that's a lot of panels.

The larger project cases that you can buy with removal plastic/metal panels can be rather expensive and more often than not, mistakes during machining of the panels or just the retirement of an old project renders the case unusable.

I have three project boxes that have been sitting on the shelf; two of them are identical desktop enclosures and cost around £50 each new. Each has one power connector hole drilled in the back of the case which is fine, but the four aluminium front panels have been extensively worked and are unsalvageable.

So I started looking around for a source of replacement panels and found a company that will custom cut aluminium panels and the price is quite reasonable compared with the price of a new enclosure so I’ve decided to give them a try.

The company web site can be found here: www.clickmetal.co.uk

Each of the more expensive enclosures has two panels, one measures 374x124x2mm and the other 374x60x2mm.

The panels cost £4.00 and £3.18 respectfully from ClickMetal, so around £7 to allow me to reuse a £50 enclosure. Not bad really. I also have another more modest enclosure that uses 2 x 243x70x1.5mm plastic panels. As I use this size enclosure quite often and just to see, I’ve ordered four of these in 1.5mm aluminium.

The total cost for all the panels (eight in total) comes in at £42.77 including VAT and a £9.95 delivery charge.
Orders over £200 are free delivery.

Via their web-site you can get an immediate on-line quote which is rather nice.  I’ll report back on the results.

As it happens, I did find a slightly cheaper company, but they won’t cut panels less than 100mm on a side so not much use for hobbiests.