DIY: $100 19″ Rolling Rack

Rob Peck describes on his blog Code Lemur! how he used four 10 foot 2X4’s and a sheet of plywood to build his own 19″ rolling rack for $100. He built it as a server rack, but it will hold Ham Radio gear just as well.

I wanted it to be mobile and easy to move as moving is something I have been very familiar with over the last few years. After not finding what I wanted anywhere, I was able to find rack rail at  zZounds (a music store that I’ve ordered guitar stuff from before). So I decided to do it myself.

The first step was to understand the measurements of a 19" rack. Originally designed to hold railroad signal switching relays, 19" rack measurements are specified by EIA-310-D. The strips from RaXXess are standard rack rail at 0.625" in with. They are mounted at 19" apart from the outside of the rails, giving a distance between the inside edges of the rails of 17.75". The depth isn’t specified, so I decided to make mine 30" deep.

A full description of the project complete with photographs is on his blog.