DIY Rack

I'd had a few rackmount pieces stacked on my desk for the last few months and picked up a power conditioner over XMas, so decided it was time to find a home for them. There weren't too many rules here: wheels, fits under the desk, slightly angled face.

I picked up a bunch of plywood, screws, nuts, bolts and washers from my local hardware store, rack rails and a blanking panel from my local music shop and got to work. The exterior is wrapped in black vinyl that was left over from some speaker mounts I'd built for my car. The inside is covered in a thin layer of polyester padding (also leftover) to deaden the fan noise inside the box.

My biggest worry throughout the project was that the sides would not match up and I'd have a crooked rack. To mitigate that I placed the two pieces on top of each other and sanded them back until they were flush .

A couple of useful lessons I learned from the process:
1 - If in doubt, use longer screws. The screws I'd purchased didn't bite deep enough in some places. To get around that I placed offcuts in the corners and fixed them in place with much longer screws. After that the thing was a tank.
2 - Budget for cables. Every time I buy something that needs cables I always forget to budget for the cables. Buying 10 power cables is not cheap, so that one stung a bit.
3 - Measure, then measure, then measure again. I cut the base way too long and didn't notice when I did a final check on all the pieces. Now the base sticks out an inch further than it should.

Other than that I'm quite happy with how it all turned out. Now I don't have to crawl under my desk at night to power everything off. If anyone wants to have a crack for themselves I'm happy to share the SketchUp project.

Cheers,

Sam

 

Can't believe I didn't think of that. Holy shit...