Enclosure Construction

This photo shows a detail of how the PCB sections were built. I started off by tack soldering the "floor" to the front panel. The front and back panels were cut to be 3" x 12" using tin snips (I grew up calling them "hog shears"). I had already laid out all of the sections I needed on paper first. I determined that the Timing Base needed to be at least 2 inches deep because of the 10-turn pot and BNC connector and the other pot controls. I had figured that the 1 inch remaining was deep enough for the RF chain. It did work, but I had to do some very careful work to make things all fit. Were I to do it again, I would have made the RF chain at least an inch and a half deep, if not 2 inches...

After tack soldering the floor to the front, I tack soldered in the individual section walls. I had laid out the sections in pencil as you will see in the next couple of photos. Once the whole thing was square, I soldered a RF-tight seam on both sides of every junction of PC board to PC board. In the end, I used over 1/3 of a pound of solder on this project.