The Proof board works well. It is a pegboard with some guide wood strips (for stiffening) and foam with aluminium rails.
The foam rails are just press fit for now this allows for quick interchange as the design varies. Soda can aluminium will work but will wear out pretty quick.
I've gone ahead a worked up a pinch roller for bending the rails. I can see that I'll need to do something to tweak the rails down the road. They work great for all the wire inserts but dip and ic pins may cause some problems depending on construction.
I'm going to move away from the board for now as we have a good test bed. Now on to compnents.
I am going to work on switches and led's first. Switches will allow me to work out pin issues with the IC packets and they have the moving parts. Translating the 10x movement to the 1x movement or just bypassing the 1x altogether will be the first issue. I'm leaning towards bypassing for now.
Led's are a different issue. Acrylic casting will most likely create parts that are too heavy. Other methods seem to leave unnatural looking parts. Lots of redoing here.