Here is a post to help demystify options for panel materials. Our stock consists of plywood of a variety of thicknesses and plastic sheets.
Plywood
Most of our cases are built with black 9mm thick plywood, like the one pictured above. They are all laminated with a plastic layer for improved scratch resistance and we also keep a wide variety of colours in limited supply in our warehouse.
We typically use them for cases that are under 1.5 metres long.
For larger cases or ones that need to bear heavy loads over 50kg we would recommend 12mm plywood. Colour choices are far more limited at this thickness.
Our 18mm plywood are almost exclusively used as castor boards to better distribute load through the bottom of the case and enable the castors to be positioned as close to the corners as possible to improve stability and access to brake pedals.
Plywood’s advantages are that they are cheap and can be engraved.
Plastic
The material we currently use in our plastic cases is our F701 7mm thick polypropylene sheets.
Although it was a relatively new addition to our stock we are very happy with its mechanical properties and texture.
They are about 10% more expensive than 9mm plywood, but are about 40% lighter thanks to their semi-hollow core.
They are versatile in that each sheet has two different coloured sides, black and navy blue. So if you do specify this material in your custom case, be sure to mention which side you prefer to use as the exterior.
Even though this material is pretty tough it tends to scratch more easily than the coating on our plywood. So cases made with F701 would be best used in small, light-duty cases.
They can be used in cases longer than 1 metre, but because they are more flexible than plywood it may make it harder to line up the lid and latches in order to close the case.