Desktop Enclosure - material question

[tlempicke]

I have a desktop that I like to use at my condo. I have designed an enclosure similar to the full enclosure that Shopbot sells, but with an eye to sound reduction.

One of the problems that I have is what to make it out of. The Shopbot enclosure is quite nice, but that much acrylic is really expensive. Buying plywood from a home supply store is iffy at best. First you never really know what the quality will be and then you are never too sure just what the thickness will be. Sometimes they will sell 6MM plywood as 1/2 inch, sometimes it will be 17/32nds and sometimes it will be accurate. Plexiglas suffers from the same problem.

A good friend had a cabinet shop years ago and he used a material that looked like sawdust board with Melamine on one side. What would I call that and what would be a good source for it?

[scottp55]

Can't help you with the material, but used some leftover Fosgate"Dead Skin" on my MakerCrate(underside of ply top) and it seems to help. My can of this stuff had dried uphttp://mobile-emotions.com/rofdesodasp1.html, but maybe it would work for you? I used the other 5 cans on door/body panels of a van and it was GREAT for eliminating road/engine/vibration. Not sure if one of the auto undercoatings may work on ply.
THIShttp://www.astrosafari.com/viewtopic.php?t=518&f=32 was interesting.
I was originally thinking even bubble wrap or a thin layer of Homosote would make a good liner.
Sure there are tons of other options and opinions.
Make sure and show pics! :)
scott

[bleeth]

Tom:
It's not only the big box store who is selling plywood and other sheet goods today that varies in thickness. Our wholesale distributors do the same. It will vary not only from manufacturer to manufacturer but from plant to plant. We simply have to compensate, when necessary, from batch to batch. Single sided melamine (comes on particle board and/or mdf) is carried by some wholesale cabinet supply distributors. Many don't like to carry it as by it's nature ambient moisture variences will cause it to start to curl fairly quickly. 6mm would be "1/4". 1/2" is 12mm. The import products are made in metric and domestic in fractional, but even domestic fractional will be anywhere from a 32nd under to more. Take a piece of plywood produced by a mill in oregon at 15/32. From there it ships across country. As it goes through the center of the country it loses moisture and gets thinner. It gets to tidewater country and starts to absorb moisture again. Then, in the case of the big box stores, it goes into a climate controlled outlet center and starts to dry again. The sheets on the outside get drier quicker than the sheets on the inside of the bundle. You can see what the results would be. At this point, I expect a sheet of 1/2" to be actually 1/2" as much as I expect a 2 x 4 to be 2" (or even 1 3/4")!
As you are ultimately using a pretty small quantity you might as well just look over their current stock, buy what looks the nicest to you, and adjust your actual design dimensions accordingly.

Dave