Build Your Own Rack Furniture

[littlepokey]

Just an idea. I make my own racks and use wood finishing strips for rails. Has the benefit of not being confined to pre-drilled spacing (I like to leave more space between units for air flow) and you never have to worry about chassis grounds causing a ground loop. Looks cool too.

[Electricide]

He meant the rack rails.

The ones I have used do not take up any room in front, they curve into the back. Thus the inside dimentions are not affected by the rails.

I have to recalibrate your posts in my head to add the accent...

[johnnydove]

there's always the ikea rack, which i know was mentioned here before a few months ago. you can take the bottom shelf off (or move it down to the very bottom) and have an 8 space rack, i'm sure it would also be easy enough to just buy two and join them together for 16U, i'll probably do that when it becomes necessary.

[paully]

Here's a great place for portable rack parts http://www.reliablehardware.com/ . Sweetwater also carries rails in almost any length, and usually ships free.

Best, Paul

[thecheat]

Hey Guys
Ive Been building my own rack gear for a while and At the moment, I've got a pretty good method for building racks for myself, not that this would help anyone else out.

I build my racks out of 1x4 pine which is dirt cheap, around 2 bucks per 8 foot length. and I build the racks as empty frames. This works for me for a couple reasons.
1 Its much easier to access all the "guts" of the rack because each side is open
2 they are Lighter
3 they take less material to make.
4 They Ventilate better because don't have AC ducted into the racks.

The Rough Openings for the rack rails should be 19 1/4", and as was mentioned before, this will accommodate most rack gear, and things can be fudged to make up.

Ill post some pictures here shortly and you guys can see what i mean, I'm sure I'm not explaining this properly.

Also, I've been planning for a while to create velcro and fabric covers to stick over the sides and back to hide the mess of cables, and ugliness of the sides of the gear but thats a long term thing, and people tend to oogle at the wiring and gear anyway.

Hope some of this helps.

[RodC]

He meant the rack rails.

The ones I have used do not take up any room in front, they curve into the back. Thus the inside dimentions are not affected by the rails.

I have to recalibrate your posts in my head to add the accent...

LOFL

Thats funny, I'm sorta stuck in the middle here. I travel a lot, folks in the north say "Your from the south" PPL in The south say "Your one of those dang yankies aint ya"

[losthighway]

I build my racks out of 1x4 pine which is dirt cheap, around 2 bucks per 8 foot length. and I build the racks as empty frames. This works for me for a couple reasons.

How do you do the base of your rack? I'm picturing a rectangle of 1x4 that really wants to fall backwards from the gear sticking out the back. I'm sure it is not true, but I can't picture it.....

[thecheat]

Hey LostHighway.

ill post some pictures, and diagrams, i promise.

ill be back with them sorry for the delay

Chris