A great topic!
6mm or 12mm plywood and a good wood glue works wonders. You can butt-joint with glue four pieces of 2x1 timber for the four sides of the box, and plywood for the top and bottom. Or if you use 12mm plywood, you can do the whole lot in it.
Wood would work well for me because I have a bunch of scrap pieces of good quality white baseboarding (or whatever it is called) from a project a few years ago that is the perfect size for small cabinets. Hadn't thought about that but it would work fine.
I also made one project (a peak program meter, VU meter) inside a deep picture frame (one of those that comes with a spacer in it), mine came from Ikea.
Ikea has tons of inexpensive - interestingly shaped plastic items that repurpose into other uses well. Too many almost. (Going there one always has to exercise restraint. Its hard sometimes.)
A cheap enclosure source are junction boxes and mains pattress boxes with blanking lids put on them (although they're brittle if you try drilling them).
I've used various junction boxes a fair amount in the past for projects and they are great for that if the project is the right size and the shape appropriate.
Super durable plastic boxes designed for outdoor use work well too.
I mentioned elsewhere I like to make my (small) boxes from 10g rectangular alloy tube. This stuff can be had in sizes up to around 4" x 2" section (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Forward-Metals-Online-Ltd/Aluminium-Rectangular-Tube-/_i.html?rt=nc&_fsub=686825012&_sid=217440252&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1513&_pgn=3) and normally bought in 1 or 2 metre lengths it's fairly economical. The disadvantages are that your project needs to slide in from the end (not an unusual situation and commercial extruded enclosures are often similar), but you do need to make your own retention fixings and also end-plates if you need them - and yes, you do need some toos to work with them. Advantages are that the resulting enclosures are cheap, extremely strong, and very customisable.
If I had some way to cut it that would be ideal, but I cant think of any way I have now besides a dremel and it seems like I would be pushing its capabilities quite a bit to attempt that. Since I don't quite need the durability of a solid aluminum case now with the freq counter I think that if I can successfully use fluorescent or clear plastic (basically if I can score or cut it with a saw blade neatly and then glue it) I will try that first.
Wonder how I can do the buttons?
It would be good to do what you did, make small buttons with a ridge around the back to hold them in the hole.
I have a 3D printer too which I use for complex shapes but the resultant feel & finish on the parts can never be mistaken for something other than a 3D printed part... It took a while to become familiar with SketchUp such that I could design what I needed but with that done it's fairly quick to design a custom part.
Yes, back in the day I am pretty sure that I had some chairs made of this aluminum tubing material, it was extremely strong and would have made a great choice for devices like the frequency counter.
... that you used for your freq counters.
(which looks very nice!)
How do you cut the square windows in the sides? I have a dremel but I get the feeling that's not enough..
@ChrisLX200 I very much like that tiny. freq. counter. we both now have.
Even with its funny choice of input connection. Really looking forward to putting it in a nice case.
It is extremely bright at the 8 setting! Like you I had to turn the brightness down to 3.
Like others experience, it also seems quite accurate out of the box so to speak.. What a great deal!
I saw somebody on YouTube who had put theirs inside of a PVC pipe, with four little feet for it and PVC caps for the ends. Looked good for outdoor use, and perhaps with some kind of plastic cover, impervious to almost anything like that.
Wonder what the green LED would look like illuminating say, a box made of green, pinkish/magenta or orange acrylic? (since its edges glow when illuminated)
I have a miter saw, which is useful for making nice cuts in smaller materials. I wonder if I could use it to saw the plastic sheeting successfully without breaking it. Not at an angle, just flat/90 degrees?
Actually, acrylic sounds like perhaps it would be just the thing, if I can saw it with my miter saw without it shattering. Need to do some Googling on that.
One good option is reusing some case that houses some other no longer useful device..
Another option is plastic.. I wonder if I could simply score it with a knife and break it along a straight edge?
And of course wood also can be used. Wood is a very versatile material and can be made quite nice looking.
And for anything involving audio and speakers it has quite good acoustic properties.