But they are not really convenient or easy to work with. When I started, I found some tutorials and design tools online, to help create the six panels. As a side benefit of this type of enclosure - if you happen to make a mistake on one panel (which I did a few times), you can just re-order that particular panel so it’s very easy to re-design and correct the mistake. You can use plastic or copper screws and pillars to secure the PCB inside the box. Generally speaking, the enclosure consists of six pieces of laser-cut acrylic panels, with teeth and holes on the side to lock them together and form a box. So I have been using laser-cut enclosures a lot for a variety of electronics projects. Compared to the other options, laser-cut enclosures are very easy to customize for the particular PCBs I have designed they are relatively cheap and fast to make, you can add text engravings to them, and there is no upfront cost.

Since last year I’ve been experimenting a lot with laser-cut acrylic enclosures. But you have to spend costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to order the mold, and this upfront cost is too much for small-scale projects. If you are making a commercial product and need volume production, you can order an injection mold, and the injection-molded enclosure fits the circuit perfectly.

You can also use 3D printing to make a custom case that fits the PCB nicely, but 3D printing is generally slow, and cheap 3D printers have poor precision. But you will be limited by the enclosures available on the market, and you have to design the PCB size and screw hole locations according to the enclosure, so it’s not very flexible. For example, if this is a one-off project, you can pick an off-the-shelf enclosure, make custom cutouts to fit the PCB and its buttons, connectors etc. There are several options to choose from. When designing electronic circuits, often it’s necessary to have a proper enclosure for the project, to protect the circuit board and components, and for aesthetic reasons.

Opensprinkler schematics