Looking for 19 inch rack

[Bob Eager]

Some of them have optional plinths that can win you 100mm or so. Might mean a few U less!

[John Rumm]

My point about wall mounting racks was not so much that they can be wall mounted (you can also just stack them on a floor), but that they are only 450mm deep.

Not a cheap way of doing it, but a 21U and a 15U cabinet stacked would probably do what you need:

could add standard cabinet shelves for the non rack mounting gear.

[tony sayer]

Why don't you do what we did recently . We needed an odd length rack to go in an office. Made one out of 20 mm Ash faced MDF set the distance between the sides exactly to the 19" standard and used the rack strip from Canford audio.

Looks fine and works a treat and all for less than 100 quid:)

[Roly]

I previously mentioned some rack strip that I got from Studiospares to make something similar to what you descrtibed.

Now that you tell us a little more, you might find that my solution works even better as mine was to conceal a mixture of 19" rack items and a collection of A/V gear in a cupboard.

It's normal to get rack shelves for A/V gear that doesn't have 19" rack ears, but they only come in increments of 1 3/4" ( 1U ), but with several items of equipment, the amount of wasted space was going to make the difference between it all fitting in the space available and it not fitting.

Normally I buy the pre-punched rack strips that are usually found, but in this case, the rack strips I used were an aluminium extrusion where captive nuts slide along to any desired point. In more normal applications, they're fiddly as hell and I would avoid them, but for an installation like mine they were ideal as I could simply buy 1U rack shelves for each item and space them exactly the distance apart that I needed, leaving ventilation gaps where necessary.

I found that the easiest way to install the gear was from the bottom up. The patch panel at the bottom ( so that the patch cords don't drape over the gear ), then the nuts were put loosely onto the next item and it was slid down to the appropriate height. If you want a ventilation gap, then temporarily leaving a suitable thickness of wood between an item and the next one while the nuts are tightened makes the job very easy.

[Pandora]

Thanks for your suggestion. Do you have a link to the extruded aluminium strips, please? I couldn't find them on the

website.

My cupboard will probably contain a network patch panel, a router, a telephone PABX, a computer, a keyboard, a small screen, a media server, an audio amplifier and a UHF distribution amplifier. Of these, only the patch panel will be 19" rack mounting perhaps.

Maybe trying to use a 19" rack is an expensive way of constructing a frame that has adjustable height shelves. Perhaps I could just buy an IKEA-type storage rack-on-wheels and try to fit your rails to it.

[Bob Eager]

I decided to stick with the rack and put a couple of servers and a UPS in it too. But I kept the UHF distribution amp out, becxause I was worried about the npise generated by the rest of the stuff. I may have been worried unnecessarily, but...

[Pandora]

I've brought all my coaxial cable and Cat 5e cable back to the same cupboard so I have committed to putting the UHF amplifier and network gear together. I can keep them apart in the cupboard, though.

I've also run a "signal earth" cable from a copper rod in the ground back to the cupboard. Fingers crossed...

[Bill]

In message , Pandora writes

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