DIY A/V rack? - Page 5

[quote=armstrr;13592974]but have you ever built a 48" tall drawer that extends 28" with 300lbs of rack/equip? [quote]

That would be a no . I'll definitely report back.

I'm not too worried about the slides themselves jamming. The rack 'racking' forward and back I'm not too worried about because I'm essentially building solid 3/4" plywood sides firmly attached to steel rails at the front and the back. I'll drill big holes as needed for ventilation.

I *AM* a bit worried about the rack racking laterally. For the back, I'm planning to go with 5" tall plywood at the bottom and top, and some steel cross braces.

The front is tougher. I clearly don't want angle braces on the front, and I'm too cheap (for now) to buy heavy duty face plates for all of my equipment and machine them. I've got two HBL2 2U (3.5" tall) thick aluminum front blank plates for the top/bottom. I'm hoping they give me some racking support in the front. We'll see.

The funny thing is that I'm WAY overbuilding this for some potential future use. For now, I'll probably have:

• AVR: 30 lbs
• PS3: 10 lbs
• Cable Box: 10 lbs

When I'm done, my RACK will probably weigh as much as all the equipment combined!

But, I'll have a lot of fun building it! And for years, I'll be able to talk about how it'll be able to handle my separate amps and video processors and HTPC's and all the other stuff that I'll actually never get. But I'll have racks that can handle them!

[quote=pmeyer;13594261]
the side to side racking is what i was referring to. i have built rolling cabinets (3'widex 4'highx3'deep) with full extension slides. my only regret was using 1/4" material for the back. 1/2" or 3/4" would have made it much more resistant to racking. make sure you rebate the sides,top, and bottom panels to accept the back panel. if you can afford to have more than 5" at the top and bottom, that would be better or something like this
____________
l
l -----------
l /
l/
that's 1/2 of it. 5" in the middle tapering out to 8-10" on the sides

[quote=armstrr;13595578]
That's a good idea. Get some more bracing without sacrificing center access. I can do the same thing on the bottom. I had planned 3/4" ply for the back.

For a DIY rack, how deep should the rack be? I was thinking to do around 24", but my receiver is only 13" and most are around 15 to 17" for depth. So 24" seems to be too deep and am now thinking to do 20".

Will this be sufficient? Am I missing something?

What about using an old PC server rack? Too bad you weren't in Michigan or I could get your one

I am using one I had in my basement because I almost blew ou tmy bellybutton getting the thing down.

When I was setting up my theatre, I chose to put all electronics in the adjacent mechanical room, but couldn't (and didn't want to) expose them in the theatre because I couldn't get at the common wall due to all the mechanical equipment occupying that space.

So since I didn't want to expose it through the hallway wall near the theatre, that left me with a simple option. Knowing I'd eventually move (this isn't my dreamhouse) and probably build another HT, I wanted something that would be freestanding, look good, be adjustable, and moveable. I ended up building a rack out of birch plywood, with a tiger maple face frame, a fixed shelf halfway up, and then five adjustable shelves. I used dado construction, and left it natural with a satin polyurethane finish. It is 74" high, 22" deep, and has adjustable legs underneath.

It looks and works great, although few people see it unless I'm showing it off. I've got my HTPC, and a NAS server and monitor in it, followed by my Pio Elite 74 TXVi with Beheringer FBQ2496, a Toshiba XA2, a Denon DVD 1920, a Samsung HD receiver, and my networking gear (16 port Netgear gigabit switch, a wireless router, and the DSL modem), and some left over space waiting for a Bell ExpressVu 9200 HD/DVR. Check it out (looking through the door to the mechanical room):













On the back view, you can see 3.5" wide pieces of plywood that will hold vertical power bars and the cable management system that I will install, once I get the HD DVR up and running and route cables to my rear speakers.

Finally, one last thing I want to do is replace the CRT monitor with a smaller LCD panel to make better use of the rack space. With this setup, I don't have to worry about fan noise or cooling, since I can just close the door on it!

Choots

Great thread and great work everyone. I will be building a horizontal floating shelf for my av rack and have been kicking around some ideas in my head and this thread should help alot.

Whats everyones opinion regarding fans. Hook them up with a thermostat to around 80-85 degrees or have them come and run with the avr?

FWIW I plan on having my cooling fans come on when power is on the AVR. That way there is no guessing when the equipment that causes heat is on the fan is on. IMHO it is just one less thing to think/worry about.

Regards,

RTROSE

Less wiring as well, thanks for the input.

Assembled my rack last night. 1/2" birch plywood on the sides, 3/4" on the bottom, back, and under the lazy susan. Mid-Atlantic rack rails and face plates. The rack is sitting on a 12" 1000 lb rated lazy susan from Rockler (spins great!). [Still need to hacksaw off the tops of the back rails].







When done, this rack will be able to slide in and out 27" and then rotate. The whole thing will sit on the 2x4/accuride slide assembly shown here:



(Also posted in my thread. Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to get this in the DIY Rack thread as well.)

Looks good! Keep the info progress reports coming. Have not started mine yet, the honey doo list growing out of control

(Cross post from my thread since this is directly rack related)

Finished the rack. I attached the lazy susan to the bottom of the rack, the base plate to the sliding rails, and then attached the lazy susan to the base plate. That last step was the only hassle, as the lazy susan was already attached to the rack bottom. I had to use holes drilled in the rack bottom to push the nuts down through the lazy susan and out the bottom of the base plate. It was worse than it sounds getting it all to line up.

The rack is in place in the back right corner. It'll eventually be about 1.5" higher to make sure the slides clear any carpet and pad. It's got three paint cans sitting on the back acting as a counterweight for now, as I haven't yet lag bolted it to the floor. Without the paint cans, the rack tips forward about when it's fully extended.

Paul,

Nice job on the pull-out and swivel rack so far. I'll thinking of building something similar. Please post progress shots as you go -- I need more inspiration

Not much progress, but I painted it. Ugly job, I happened to have a bit of black satin interior paint left over in the pan after rolling out part of the ceiling. Masked the front and slopped it on. The only part of the black that will be visible is the interior side walls, though, and they look fine.

I swear I didn't know pmeyer's color scheme...

Here is mine in progress (I took the shelves out to paint it).

That looks very good. Are you going to have some type of active cooling?

It will vent into a utility room... but there is an HVAC supply line that runs through the top of the closest, so I have options.

I'm about to embark upon a similar custom wall rack so thanks to all for posting this info previously...

This is probably a silly question, buy when using a "standard" rack or rack-rails and using rack-mounted shelves, how to you mount the custom face-plate so that it is flush with any "blank" panels, since the shelf screws in from the front and thus would offset the faceplate panel vs. blank panels that would be directly mounted to the rack?

Do you just use spacer washers or something to bring everything into alignment?

After a little inspiration here is my almost finished rack. I still have to build face plates and decide how I want to trim it. I don't have any high end equipment so I was going to cover it with an Ikea glass cabinet door but I didn't take into account the width of the finish trim and the door ended up about an inch to small, it's killing me. Because I had planned on using the glass door I didn't finish it the rack to standard rack widths but I did install the outer stud framing to the standard rough in width for a rack (20 1/4") that way if I ever want to use wider components or a standard rack all I have to do is remove the trim and unscew some studs and the rough in framing will be exposed. I had to do a little reframing and electrical but this project only took about one weekend.




Before


Thanks for all the ideas.

Getting closer on mine. (partial repost from my build thread)

My problem: Since the rack is sitting on a lazy susan, there is nothing to keep it from rotating just a bit when it is in it's normal position. It can also be tilted ~1/4" side to side, since the lazy susan has a bit of play. It's not going anywhere, but before I install trim around it, I wanted to know it's going to have a fixed position.

I took some scrap hard maple and used the band saw to make 4 shims. 1/4" at one end, 5/8" at the other, one face sanded very smooth with 100 grit sand paper. I glued/stapled them to the side of the rack near the top and bottom of each side, with the thin end toward the back of the rack, smooth face out.

I then slid the rack into place and pulled a shim (normal lowes hardwood shim) between the stud and the maple shim, thick end towards the wall, thin end out. The thin end of the shim stuck way out into the room. I adjusted all the shims until the rack was vertical and had the spacing I wanted relative to the studs. I marked each shim where it met the front of the stud.

I cut off the shims at that spot, sanded the rack-side face smooth, rounded over the rack side of the thin end with sand paper, and glued/stapled them to the stud.

Now, when I slide the rack back into place, it glides right back into perfect alignment, squeezed between the hard-wood shims. It doesn't wiggle side to side at all (perfect, better than I'd hoped) and has a consistent placement so I won't have any trim sizing issues.

I had planned to use some bees wax (I used it on lathe work) on the sliding faces of the shims, but it doesn't need it. It doesn't stick at all.

Pictures:

That is definitely a sweet setup. A rack mount cooling fan would be awesome for the last rack!! I'm sure with your skills you could build something like this from coolerguys.com

I love what Tom did with his setup. I especially like the way he did the faceplates. I used 1/16" steel. The shelves are supported with Unistrut:

@ aaronlinkous

I just realized that's homemade. Nice man! I've seen that pic a few times and thought you bought it. looks real professional!

Here's a shot of my DIY rack. Mine's real simple, but spacious and effective. It didn't have to be real pretty because it's living in a closet.



Get's the job done and it only cost around $75 for materials. Shelves are all adjustable. I used those furniture moving pads on the bottom to make it easy to move around.

This thread is awesome and it has definitely made me want to do this as well. Check out my thread i posted for pictures of whats going on right now:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1129476

I want to do it the way quite a few of you guys did it in the sense of building an enclosure... it just looks much more sturdy to me. The hanging route does look like the much more easy/straight forward route though! I am just worried about weight and the number of components I have. I have a preamp, amp, receiver (for home audio), directv box, blu-ray player, vhs player, 400cd jukebox, power conditioner and I want to add a gaming system to the theater as well.

If you look at my pictures, I am going to try my best to do it facing the right side wall and bring the door back to close the closet. The other route would have been to build one on rails that slides into place right up against the door opening you see and then slide back for access purposes. I imagine it will be really hard to get that to look like its built in and clean like the rest of the posted setups.

I have a few questions...
1) I want to add drawers (like 2 of them) so how do I go about incorporating them into this rack? I want them to sit flush with all the rest of the faceplates of course.
2) how do the faceplates screw on? I don't get where they attach...
3) does someone have a pic before they put in their final molding/borders? I want to see whats going on there
4) how do I ventilate the closet? Its completely sealed, above it is a staircase also. I have no idea how to ventilate rooms, but I know this room needs it BADLY. Thats why we took off the door because even when everything is on standby, that closet got warm. If I do this install, the door will be closed (or I will be blocking the door if I go with the second option), so ventilation is a must.
5) Which method should I go about doing this? The one where you basically are hanging the brackets to support shelves. or the one where you build that squared off cage? I doubt you can have drawers with the first option right?

Thanks!

Here are some pictures of the construction of my shelving unit and pull-out and spinning rack. I've never done anything like this before so it took a long time but came out nice!

So call me a copycat, but I just outfit my media room last month. I initially thought I'd just put it all up front as that is where the builder had wired everything. Well that just wasn't good enough since the builder obviously did not know what he was doing when wiring a media room. I decided then and there to move everything to a closet in back. My wife thought I was crazy when I started cutting large holes in our drywall, but I have to say I'm pretty happy with the look so far. Now I just need to make the face plates to surround the units and clean up the wiring in back, but taking a break for a couple weeks.

This is a great thread! I'd love to see some more!

Here's mine - nothing special just functional



Its a mess so lucky its hidden