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In so many cases, what is
available as standard off-the-shelf products do
not meet your requirements. The question you should
be asking yourself is not why you should have
a custom chassis designed but  why
wouldn't you. There are few downsides and so many
advantages. If you're wondering how many variations
exist for an Intel based system, see our Custom
Showcase for a small sampling. Each of these
custom designs was done for a client who couldn't
find a suitable off-the-shelf product.
The Taiwanese chassis everybody
sells, including us as some of our off-the-shelf
products, are, in many cases, good chassis
(we sell excellent chassis, by the way). There
is still a lot of poorly designed junk out there.
But if you pick a good supplier with good designs,
these can be nice products. The Taiwanese are
experts at mass producing low cost stuff using
hard tooling and cheap labor. If you need a handful
of systems for in-house use, there is some very
nice value in using these chassis.
However, there are still
many reasons to not use offshore products, especially
if you are releasing a branded product where the
chassis is a core component. Why would you want
to sell an integrated system with component costs
in excess of $$thousands$$ and worry about a chassis
cost of a couple of hundred dollars? You're selling
an SQL server for $10,000 with 60 points of margin
and you're worried your chassis cost may be a
little high. Gimme a break! In most cases the
enclosure is, by far, the lowest cost component.
Remember also, the enclosure is your customer's
first impression.
Taiwanese Downsides:
- No product identity
- Their color - usually some variation of black
- No logo
- Unknown consistency
- Their features
- Looks like a cheap clone computer
Chassis Plans Domestically Manufactured Custom Design
Advantages:
- Strong product identity with your logo and
painted your color
- Unique look - nobody else has anything that
looks like it
- Great first impressions
- Your required features
- Your labels
- Agency approvals in your name
- Your outside packaging
- Your documentation
- Consistent product - fully documented and
revision controlled
- Assured continued product availability - no
end-of-life issues
- Integrated to your specification with your
hardware
- Increased sales for you
You tell us what you want
and don't want. We put together a customer drawing
and a proposal to make sure we're all on the same
page. We show you what it will look like, what
features will be included, suggest a few things
you probably didn't think about, and tell you
what it will cost and how long it will take. What
could be easier? Odds are, since we've done so
many designs, we can do a simple modification
of one of our existing designs.
The engineering talent at Chassis Plans is unsurpassed.
We've been doing this since 1985 (responsible
for founding Industrial Computer Source and designing
much of their existing legacy line), have provided
designs and products to many existing chassis
manufacturers, and have an unmatched Custom
Showcase.
Design Process
and Philosophy
For a detailed explanation of the Design Process
and our Design Philosophy, please link here.
With over 25 years of combined experience in industrial
computer design, manufacturing, and agency certification,
no project will present difficulties not previously
resolved. We are experienced and conversant in
the following subjects:
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