Buy chassis or have friend build chassis?

A friend of mine is walking me through my first time build. I have a friend who will build cases for no more than the cost of material or i can buy pre made chassis. We are making pre's and compressors. From your past experience has it been smarter to have the cases custom made or to just buy the available ones and do your own drilling?

:

Depends on if you wanna learn metal work or not.

Simple as that. Do you?

Custom built cases usually fit your exact specification but cost much more money, whereas stock cases drilled at home are cheap and mostly look very poor.

It depends on your final goal! For example, if your goal is to sell them, then ask yourself: "What is the customer likely to buy?"

: )

Yeah, I used to make a gigantic mess with XLR holes and front panels. Now I get everything lasered.

But it's not really financially smart as I end up designing more stuff instead of selling anything

For that it's worth looking at...

As eskimo pointed out whether you want to learn/deal with metal work is a major consideration.  There will be a learning curve and if you have no prior exp you may want to consider practicing on old junker chassis to get your technique up to par before jumping on a brand new chassis.  It can be rewarding and even fun. Consider the cost of proper tools needed when deciding on which is 'cheaper'.  Sore wrists and aching muscles come with the deal ;D

If you decide to outsource your metal work there will be a whole different set of details to deal with - namely accurately using design software and getting the correct info to the custom shop.  Be prepared to have to occasionally go behind their work and touch up things so that everything fits right (boring out holes a little wider etc.)

If it works to your advantage you could use Front Panel Express for the front panel work and do the rest yourself - that way the most visible portion of the unit will be neat and tidy.  It may be cheaper, it may not.

And too, it depends on whether these are on-off pieces or for commercial sale.  If for commercial I'd say outsource to a custom shop for consistency.  Look locally too - there may be a metal-fab shop within driving distance.  Save some shipping $ and get in-person communication.   

For a first build, build it yourself. This way you will see if you are good at it and if you like it. If you screw up, you can -later- get it done professionally. In this case, you will most likely also re-build your circuitry..