Housings for prototypes (electronics)

[GregValcourt]

As my hobby, I'm working on a robot. I've got the electronics mostly done, and it works. Programming is not a problem, since I'm a professional developer. What's got me stumped is housing the PCB boards.

I've look at some products online, but I can't seem to find anything that would allow me to mount and stack several boards in a housing. I've got boards raging from 3" X 2 1/2" to 5" X 7". I'm being rough with the figures here, no matter, where do you find housing generic enough to do this?

What do you use for spacing boards of different sizes in a housing? I could probably use more than an inch of vertical spacing between boards (being able to choose custom spacings would be good).

 

[AlephZero]

The neatest solution is make all your boards the same size. Then you can use stackable mounting pillars like these: http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/Hexagonal-Posts-come-in-various-sizes-and-materials-549225

Or, you could make a board to act as a backplane, and use edge connectors to plug your assorted sizes of boards into it - similar to a PC motherboard and expansion cards. That also gives you a neat way to make interconnections between the boards.

 

[edward]

Have you tried Radio Shack, they have a number of electronic project boxes in various configurations. E bay also has them, many are from the UK . but they ship to the USA.

http://www.radioshack.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2032276

 

[dlgoff]

Do a google image search on electronic enclosures.