Bespoke Project Enclosures .. .. .. .

Interesting extrusion. It does eat up some front surface area compared to other techniques, but that's the price of a multi-use part.

In the past I worked for an electronic enclosure company. We rarely used self-tapping screws. Instead, for something like this extrusion, we pressed in brass inserts. For the same screw size it made the extrusion larger, but those little puppies never stripped out or pulled loose.

ak

One point I try to make with people - before you start even thinking about laying out a circuit board, figure out what you're going to do for an enclosure. This is particularly important for prototypes. An off-the-shelf enclosure may work well, but the circuit board needs to be designed to fit. Changing the board size slightly and adding mounting holes in the right locations may allow an inexpensive enclosure to work well. Not planning ahead may mean investing $$$ in an enclosure because the board is a few millimeters too long.

These extrusions do look like a nice solution. Circuit board material could be used for the panels.

For anything above the small hand held enclosure, but a typical large operator pendant or electrical enclosure that I cannot find off the shelf, I get a local metal fabricator to build me one to my CAD drawing, I find it less expensive than the extrusion source.
Max.