External Drive Rack System

thingiverse

This is a modular racking system for external drives or similar peripherals. It saves desk space by mounting the drives in a vertical stack. As many drives as you like can be stacked, but I would not stack more than five or six drives to keep the rack stable. It is designed to accept rectangular cases with a size of ~115mm x ~30mm, while not a standard, most USB drive cases are about this size, but do check. The drive cases I am using are 180 mm long but this does not really matter. I designed the rack to be very economic with filament and fast to print. While it looks skeletal and flimsy, once the drives are inserted the weight and cases of the drives will make it stronger. I suggest heavier mechanical drives are placed at the bottom of the rack to maintain stability. There are 2 constructions of rack that can easily be slotted together, for each type of rack you will require a number of parts. Rack base: You will only need one of these per stack, it has legs to support it on a flat surface. You will need to print:- 2x baseside 1x labelplate 1x back_bar 1x front_bar Rack unit: You will need as many of these as drives you want to stack on the first, there are 2 interlocking mirrored sides, unlike the base sides. These slot neatly into each other to provide stability. The interlock slot running length-ways should be facing the outside of the rack. See the photo of me showing one drive lifted off to see the interlock (glue may be applied in this slot for really strong construction). You will need to print:- 1x subrack_L_side 1x subrack_R_side.stl 1x back_bar 1x lableplate The label plate provides both structural support, and a place to put a sticker to identify the drive. As in my photos, you can also use a cad program to emboss text into it, and maybe rub children's crayon into the text to make the text more visible, if you do not have a two colour printer. The drive cases I have used I have been very happy with, and are quite cheap:- https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B075ZYDR2M