If you’ve seen me around, you’ve probably seen my ebike with the milk crate attached to the rear rack. It works great, but I’ve been thinking of replacing it with something more custom - specifically with a larger interior volume, specialized compartments, and a lockable lid.
My first thought was to make it out of 1/2" plywood, laser cut with box joints and with some aluminum angle on the corners for reinforcement. At the same time, I’m a bit concerned about the weight of a setup like that. Does anyone know of a plastic or lightweight material, laser cutt-able, that’d be a good fit for this sort of project? Something similar to the material the bathroom stall walls are made out of seems like it’d be perfect.
I don’t know if is laserable or not, but I recently made a box for dispensing my catheter kits which sounds a bit like you are describing…
I have a bunch of light weight aluminum square tube that I scrounged from a folding canopy someone was tossing… I turned it into angle by cutting to length and taking off two corners with the milling machine. I built a frame out of the angle, pop-riveting it together. I then cut panels from a sheet of what I think is the same sort of plastic panel sheet they use in shower stalls, and glued them into the frame…
My box doesn’t lock and has a partially open front, but I think the basic design would work…
Another alternative might be to take a look in the motorcycle shops for a motorcycle ‘top box’…