It’s a sad reality that many guns come from the factory in cardboard boxes or cases that are severely lacking in terms of quality. As a result, most of us have at least one gun in serious need of a case upgrade. MyCaseBuilder can help, as the company’s custom online design program allows the user to configure a case to suit her/his needs—providing both a large inventory of case offerings and the ability to personalize the interior foam cutouts to the customer’s exact specifications. Case choices include models from many of the biggest names in the industry (such as Nanuk, Pelican, Plano, SKB, etc.) along with MyCaseBuilder’s own Doro line of heavy-duty, injection-molded, polymer cases. Once the host case has been selected, the customization program is used to tailor-make the high-density foam insert. Buyers also have the option of purchasing only the custom-cut insert, for installation within a case they already own.
Cutouts can be chosen from a library of more than 300 pre-rendered shapes—including many popular firearm and magazine designs—and users can add their own circular and rectangular shapes, as well. But the program’s most impressive feature is its ability to upload a customer-provided image of an object, auto-trace it and render its dimensions precisely into the foam. The company’s design program is simple to use—and quite frankly, it’s a lot of fun to play around in while finalizing your insert.
For our test sample we chose MyCaseBuilder’s Doro D3114-5 case, the external dimensions of which are 33.4"x17.3"x6.2", with an internal compartment measuring 31.5"x14.5"x5.4". The D3114-5 weighs 13 lbs., 12 ozs. when empty, and features two-stage, hinge-style latches, accommodation for two locks and a pressure-relief valve. In order to fully test the program’s auto-tracing function, we chose to use a firearm that had been modified far beyond the factory configuration—an IWI Tavor G18 with all manner of accessories and optics festooned on it. The online program successfully imported the unique shape of our rifle without issue, and we added slots in the excess space around the gun for three 30-round AR-15 magazines pulled from the pre-saved library of shapes, and added a custom slot for a Dead Air Sandman-S suppressor.
Our sample case arrived within a month of finalizing the design, and the exactness with which its foam insert was waterjet-cut is impressive. Each minute contour present on the host gun is expertly rendered into the foam—down to a minuscule gap on the magnifier due to the diopter’s setting. Each item is held snuggly in place by the foam, yet can be removed easily thanks to optional finger notches included during the design process. Our test sample, pairing both the D3114-5 case and a custom insert, retails for $195 ($83 for the insert alone), a very reasonable sum given the virtually limitless options presented by MyCaseBuilder’s design program. mycasebuilder.com
