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Aluminium enclosure for a handheld version from PCBWay!

A project log for DIY 1.3 GHz FET Probe

An active scope probe with high-ish bandwidth and very low input capacitance

christophChristoph 08/14/2022 at 20:360 Comments

I wanted to make a handheld version of this probe, so a fellow maker designed an enclosure that was big enough to hold, and also big enough for other probe designs. 

PCBWay offers CNC parts, including surface treatment like anodizing. It's not as cheap as ordering PCBs, but still affordable. Also, PCBWay sponsored these parts which lowered the barrier significantly.

Some notes about ordering:

What I got

The package came pretty quickly (FedEx, "IOSS" whatever that means) and the parts were very well packaged inside:

Nice! Let's take all that wrap off:

Gorgeous! Not a single scratch or dent, and the parts have a smooth, silky feel to them. The top part is gold anodized and the bottom is natural. They fit perfectly:

Those M2 screws need an internal thread in a blind hole. I had previously cut some of these in desktop milled parts, and that was no pleasure. The threads from PCBWay were pretty good:

To get those I had to supply a "drawing", as noted above. My drawing was pretty minimal, because I couldn't create a decent professional looking technical drawing myself. Instead, they got this:

That was apparently sufficient, I got no questions back and they cut the threads to 2 mm usable depth, which was absolutely enough for M2 and probably close to the maximum depth they could have cut in this part anyway.

Overall, a very good outcome!

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