People often compliment the wooden cases that I house the STEM Modular system in, so here’s how to make your own pretty easily. There are other methods out there, but I think this is pretty simple yet also involves a healthy amount of commitment.
60HP box
Backstory
STEM Modular, in addition to being a connection between STEM and electronic music, is also my way of making an affordable eurorack system for myself. I have experienced with a number of ways to add frugality to my modular pursuits, and creating cases was one of the most gratifying, albeit physical labor intensive.
I have made a number of different eurorack cases myself, starting with repurposed old suitcases and moving on to laser cut bamboo. I started with some very long vector rails, threaded inserts (later went with little square nuts), a hacksaw, a metal file, and some bolts from the hardware store. That was probably way more work than I needed to do, but it got the job done.
My first bamboo case. 84HP and a bit deeper than necessary.
Considerations
First off, the cases are laser cut bamboo. There are a number of places online to outsource lasering of a wide variety of materials, or you can do it yourself if you have access to a laser (I don’t own a laser, and having rented time on one at a local makerspace I found it more efficient to outsource the lasering). The size of your box will be restricted by the source material you use, which is likely restricted by the size of laser cutting machine, but with eurorack being so compact it's not a big issue. I have made an 84HP box, but found it more cost effective to make some 60HP boxes (I can fit 2 boxes on one sheet of bamboo) You’ll figure out what works best for you.
Specs
All the specs for eurorack construction can be found on the Doepfer website (particularly this page). This is the information I used to determine the inside dimensions of the box. The height is 3U or 133.4mm and the length is dependent on how many HP you want.
Box "design"
I found a few websites that will automatically generate a box PDF given desired dimensions, and eventually settled on https://makeabox.io/. This particular website asks for internal dimensions and material thickness and generates an image with lines for an enclosed box. Of course we don't want an enclosed box, so I imported my file into Illustrator and edited lines so that one edge of the box is flat and open (see before and after image below).
Depending on the laser you are using you will have to determine what thickness the cutting lines in your image will need to be (for me it was 0.001mm) and if there is any line color requirement (I have used a setup that required blue lines and another that required black).
Rail installation
Now that you have the box you need to get rails into it. I think there is probably already some info about this out there, as DIY cases are not a new thing, but here’s my take anyway. The metal used to make vector rails is actually pretty soft, so if you prefer to sweat in order to save a few bucks you can totally get long rails and cut them to length with a hacksaw. Vector rails can be sourced from a number of different places though, and if you search for “custom length eurorack rails” in a search engine or Etsy you can order the length that fits for you (I really don’t recommend the hacksaw method, but it’s an economical option if you are planning to make a few cases). Eurorack case brackets are the other piece of the puzzle, and will make installing the rails into your box much easier (just make sure you account for their thickness because the inside of your box might need to be slightly wider than your desired HP).
Conclusion
There is a little math involved here, but for the most part it is straightforward (remember: “measure twice, cut once”). In the future I am planning to design around the need for brackets and include holes for mounting vector rails into the laser design of the box, and I will post photos when that happens. Finally, if all of this seems like too much to do but you want a box, you can order “puzzle pieces” or a finished box here (only 60HP available at this time).