I dunno about others, but I bought a prefabbed box that was fairly “no customization” oriented (the Customcade boxes), so all the custom hole setup falls into my lap if I want it. No choice, really.
As far as using a square bit, I’m far from a woodworker so my knowledge on that end of the spectrum is limited as is my skill, so I’d feel much better going a method that’s simple than experimenting and fucking up.
Anyways this time I used a seimitsu MS plate. The hole is actually 1in (25mm) but the plate can cover the hole if the mounting holes are centered proper. More drilling on my part but same idea.
judging by your response, i guess theres no such thing, haha. well I assumed I guess…nice I guess we have to keep looking for creative ways to get it mounted
I first cut a 24mm hole since I had this size handy (wonder why). The problem then was finding something to cover the hole. Originally, I was going to cut a piece of plexi with a recessed hole to not have anything protrude. However, I found that cutting plexi is a pain in the ass and then I remembered that there are faceplates for keystone jacks. I bought a **SOFT ** Keystone faceplate at Lowes for $1.29 or something around there and cut it with a steel cutting tool (overkill). I shaped a nice little rounded square (could be smaller) and found out that the tabs fit snugly into a 24mm hole, holding it in place without any form of gluing. The only down point of this is that it protrudes a little bit and there aren’t very many colors to choose from. However, I believe this is an inexpensive and stylish way to achieve RJ-45.
If I ever do this mod again, I’d probably stick to the same Cat5 Neutrik jack I bought from GamingNow.net and use the other RJ45 end of the leftover Cat5 cable I have.
I’d probably do the mounting plate mod rtdzign did since I have 4-5 JLF flat plates lying around doing nothing. Probably easier to do that than the acrylic/plexi mod I did for my first round at this. Flatter and probably easier to drill, too, not to mention neater. I had no idea acrylic/plexi was such a pain to work with!
My main beef against standard RJ45 jacks is the need to do all the insulation stripping and cable positioning on the interior end. With the RJ45 interface I have on the interior of my Neutrik jack, it’s just plug in and that’s it. It can always be removed easily if I have to something with the PCB (which I probably never will have to).
I’d never buy those $40 Neutrik-cased cables, either. The hoods I bought for the RJ45 cables are doing a nice enough job protecting the tabs as it is. Unless I had young kids or aggresive animals I wouldn’t worry about overkill in cable protection.