I am about to build a new AV cabinet out of some leftover mahogany-faced plywood. The old one has a lot of space that's useless now. Three feet of LP storage space and a bay large enough to accommodate a turntable with a hinged plastic cover. Definitely not sized for today's stuff. (-"
The big consideration for this unit is wire concealment and access to the back of each piece of equipment. I want to be able to easily reach and reconfigure the wiring so I was thinking of mounting the cabinet on casters. However I think a hinged, swing-away design that swung along a fixed path would keep the wires from getting pulled out inadvertently the way they might with a free-wheeling caster unit.
I thought of using a $10 steel jackpost as a "hinge pin" and routing cables through the many holes in the column and down through the floor into the basement where most of the AV cables go but there are a number of problems with that sort of design that concern gravity and material fatigue.
To swing out from a center hinge pole requires very strong shelves. I've seen hardware for circular staircases that looks sturdy enough to support cantilevered shelves but it's frightfully expensive. I could make my own out of various pipe brackets but the A/V equipment is heavy and it would take some serious bracing to keep the shelves from drooping on the unsupported side.
So after considering all that, I decided what I need is a traditional box shelving unit design but with a pivot point on one corner and casters on the other three so that it always swings out on a predictable path. That probably means drilling a screw through the carpet into the underlayment but that's OK to secure the pivot point - something like a closet pole hanger.
I also intend to design false shelf bottoms of about 6" on each shelf to accommodate power strips, surge protectors, X10 modules, wall wart power transformers and misc. wiring. The false bottoms will be open in the back and will probably be ventilated by a series of 90cm PC ventilation fans - they're pretty quiet. Not sure if the front of the false bottoms will be a strip of plywood or some sort of cloth grille to aid in ventilation.
The same is true for the back of the unit, which will have a false back that's about 6 to 8" from the wall it's pushed against, again for concealing wiring between the shelves. The shelves themselves will end about an inch before the false back so that wires can drop behind the shelf and into the false bottoms or false back.
I'd post a sketch but as powerful as modern PC's are, I've yet to find something that can take my arthritically challenged freehand drawing and clean them up the way Word can do for writing. (-;
Comments, suggestions, improvements and critiques welcome.
-- Bobby G.