How-To Make Custom Project Enclosures by Hand

In this instructables, I show you how to make cool fully customizable project enclosures! I make an enclosure for my ebay usbtiny ISP. This is the final product. I know it looks bad but that's just me. It's really easy and cheap to bulid!

Let's get started! 

For your enclosure you need some materials:
1/4'' plywood
1/4'' acrylic (plexi-glass)
1/4'' foam core 
1/4'' hardwood 
Or whatever you want!
Tools:
circular saw or band saw
sand paper or belt sander
pencil
straight edge 
ruler
t-square 
weight or clamp
paper
hot glue gun!

You will also your project or product to enclose
I use my usbtiny isp knock-off

Now comes the bulid!

For my project, I'm using about 1/4'' hardwood from the home depot for about $6. Measure your project and determine what size the sides, front and back, and top and base should be. Remember to make that dimensions a little bigger that your project so you have some room for errors. REMEMBER to use the thickness of you material in you measurements!!!
Next transfer you measurements to the material and use a ruler and a t-square to get straight lines.

Now to cut in out!

To cut this hardwood definitely  try to use a bandsaw. However, I don't have a bandsaw so I used a battery operated circular saw. I perfer the lightness of the saw because to other corded one was old a super heavy to cut this. For acrylic use the circular saw, band saw, table saw with 60-80 teeth, jigsaw, and finish it up with a router. For foam core use a knife. Put a clamp on your project when cutting. But since this material is so light, I used an iron weight. After cutting use sandpaper or a belt sander to further straighten up the pieces from the cutting. For cutting square I used a drill and filed a square out of the drilled out hole. 

Now let's put it together!

For the hardwood you could nail it together, but when you go to drill holes, the drill bit might hit a nail. Also, you might nail your finger down since it's so thin and dangerous. Just use hot glue, it work fine and believe me it is solid! For acrylics route the edges about 1/16" to get a smooth edge. Than use weld on 4 or for curse edges if you don't have a router and have rough edges, use weldon 16.
For the others, use hot glue.

Now let's see how it turned out and what it does!

It looks terrible! Don't worry that just me screwing up a little on every part. I sure your will be amazing. This was just a little guide and encouragement for you to make you own project enclosures. I programmed an atmega328 on pin 11 the fade sketch and it works! Don't for get to comment on this project and point out all the mistakes I made.  I love reading your feedback a lot! Thanks for stopping by!