A lot of freelancers and musicians need road/flight cases to project their gear for those small jobs where they can transport their equipment in the back of their car. Sometimes they might travel with equipment on a plane. Some of you might want to build your own road cases in your spare time to save some serious money. However, you might be under the impression that you will need to buy a lot of expensive tools, hence this will make building a road case for yourself at home a prohibitive exercise. You might already own a small home workshop with power tools and cutting saws. It is possible that you maybe able to make a road case yourself with some basic tools at home and spend mainly on case DIY materials and hardware.

In this article, we assume you need to build a small cable packer with pull out handles and corner castors so you can travel between venues with the case in your car.

Getting Started

Please first decide on the application of the road or flight case you plan to build yourself. Should it be light weight? Do you need to take it onto a plane? Do you need to ship it via a courier from time to time? These factors affect hardware size (small, medium or large) and thickness of the plastic or plywood panels you may need to consider (7mm, 9mm or 12mm). the material choice affects weight of case as well as how heavy duty they will be. For example, if you always transport the case with your own car and sometimes might need to take it onto a plane then you may consider using our 7MM PP flight panel with small surface mount hardware to reduce weight. Otherwise, the WBP 9.7mm laminated plywood with medium sized hardware would be a good idea for most DIY cases if weight is not a concern.

A Simple Drawing

Once the type of panels and hardware preferences are decided, it is helpful to sketch up the case on a paper and mark the dimensions, draw up the case handles, corners, castors and latches would be useful to help you work out the quantity of the different hardware. Decide and mark the case lid and base.

If the road case you are constructing also comes with internal dividers and foam lining, it is helpful to also draw up section views, with dimensions. In this case using a colored pen would help to distinguish foam and case panels. Accurate dimensions and knowing the thickness of the panels and foam used will help you to cut these parts accurately.

Work Out Your BOM (Bill of Material)

After the drawings are done, do your math work to put together your list of materials with qty.

For panels, you need to work out how many full sheets you may need by checking if your needed parts can fit in the standard sheet size. For laminated plywood and PP panels the sheet size is 1220x2440mm. For EVA foam Armor has 2 sheet sizes: 1200*2500MM, and 500*1200MM, for EPE it is 1000*2500MM.

Up next is to work out which extrusions and how many lengths you need to order. As you may already know, road cases needs at least 2 type of extrusions:

Angle extrusions: they are used on all 12 edges of the box for structural reinforcement. You also need to decide if you want to use single angle extrusions, or double angle extrusions. Read this article to help decide which one to choose.

Edge extrusions: this is the extrusion that comes with male and female side so they mate to help the case close properly. There are two types of edge extrusions too. Read this article to understand the difference.

Please note our extrusions comes in 3.0M standard. They can be cut in half to save cost in shipping. To work out how many lengths you need, it is very important that you do not overlook the number of cut parts you will need. Using a basic case with a lid and base as an example, it will need: 16 pieces of angle extrusions, and 8 pieces of edge extrusions. The below article teaches you to use an online software to decide how many extrusions you will need to order:

Work Out Quantity Of Extrusions To Order For DIY Road Cases

Once the panels, foam, and extrusions are out of the way, the hardware are relatively easy to work out. The same basic road case with lid and base would have 8 corners, 8 braces. It might need about 200 to 300 rivets. The quantity of handles, latches, castors, hinges and lid stays depends on your design and preferences.

Placing Order

Once you have the list of material, you need to find a road case hardware and material supplier to order all the parts you need. If you are on this page, you know Armor Cases can supply all these parts for you and help with validating that the parts you selected are consistent and work with each other. Our Material and Hardware section is well categorised and with enough variety for different type and sizes of cases.

If you still find it overwhelming to choose the right parts. Please feel free to contact us and email through your drawings, your list of material, and application of your case for us to put together the order for you. Please note we generally cannot be held responsible to ensure you have ordered enough materials for your build as going into details to calculate if you need 6 lengths or 7 lengths of extrusions requires basic math that you are able to do correctly.

Tools You Need for the Job

Below are the tools and items that you will need and what you need them for. Most of they are not expensive, and you might already have them at home. We have included links from Bunnings as an example:

A small hammer
Approx. 100 tiny nails of approx.20mm length
A manual riveter
A power drill with 5mm drill bit for aluminium
A ratchet tiedown strap
A track saw for cutting panels. Or best if your mate has a workshop with bench saw large enough to cut your panels.
A circular saw with the correct blades for cutting extrusions. Ideally, it can cut them in 45 degree angles too.

These would be enough for you to get a case done at home. For those who have tools including air compressors and pneumatic rivet guns and nail guns, you will be able to work faster of course.

Cutting Your Parts

It is finally time to get your hands dirty but first make sure you will get your cut parts right.

Double check your panel, foam and extrusion part sizes and pay great attention to the panel thickness and do not assume a 9MM panel is exactly 9MM because they are laminated and different manufacturer’s products may come in different thickness. For example, Armor’s 9mm laminated panel is actually 9.7MM. Working out and cutting these parts accurately will affect not only efficiency of your build but also the quality of the finished road case. Also, allow yourself enough room for error so that if the case end up a 2-3mm bigger or smaller than planned it should not cause any problem.

As a best practice, we recommend you first cut only the panels, build the box first before you measure again and cut extrusions and foam to suit the actual build.

Construct Your Road Case

Put the box together using a hammer and those tiny nails. You need to make sure the finished internal and external dimensions are the same as per your drawing. Once this is confirmed the job is half done because the remaining part of your case building would be relatively straight forward.

Once your lid and base are finished and you have put on the edge extrusions, you can close the lid and strap the lid and base together using your strap so that the box becomes one piece. This allows you to align and install latches and hinges accurately and is quite important to ensure the box is square and closes properly once it is finished.

You will now start to install hardware and angle extrusions using your power drill tool. We recommend you to start with latches and hinges. Align a latch so that it splits exactly where the tongue and groove extrusion split. Drill 2 holes first and put rivets in so that it won’t be able to move before you do the rest of the holes. After the external box is done you will remove the strap and test to see if it opens and closes properly.

The finishing step would be to put on interior linings such as EVA foam or carpet. There are different types of adhesives that might be suitable for foam lining in a case. Read this article to know the differences and how to apply.

Job Done

Now you have finished building your own road case at home and you should make yourself a coffee and share your work with your friends on Facebook. Contact us today to get your DIY road case project started and save hundreds.