[reezekeys]

I bought a 1U rack shelf and need to mount a 3.5" eSATA enclosure and
an Emagic 26 audio interface to it. I've been through some hardware
stores and arts & crafts supply places looking for ideas. So far I've
seen aluminum strips I can make u-brackets from, velcro strips, and
long wire ties with small mounting blocks that you pass them through.
I've also looked around the Markertek web site and some other sites
that deal with racks but haven't seen anything there. None of the
options I've seen look ideal, although the u-brackets would probably
be the most workable (what I saw was 1/8" thick 1-inch wide aluminum
strips, probably overkill for this job).

The rack shelf is pre-drilled for a variety of 1/2-rack & 1/3-rack
units, which is probably useless to me unless I get lucky and have the
screw holes be where I need. I have my drill ready.

I'm guessing that the pros who do this have an accepted method. Any
tips are appreciated, thanks!

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 2:04 pm, "Soundhaspriority" wrote:


I don't know of any accepted method, but there is a lot of kludging. The
Midiman DMP-3 has a single reinforced threaded hole in the bottom. The unit
can be mounted via the single hole. You might inspect your
Emagic for such a hole. If the drive enclosure is good metal, consider
tapping it.

No, no holes at all. It's a plastic rectangular box. The drive
enclosure is also plastic.

Another route would involve the use of a strong, compliant plastic. Gray PVC
sheet stock is available from plastic shops, and has good mechanical
properties. It could serve as the top surface of a clamp. Use long screws to
clamp the appliance between the shelf and the PVC sheet.

That sounds like a good idea. I seem to remember seeing thin strips
of steel with holes in them, that can be cut to be the top of a
clamp. Might be easier to get & cut to size than the plastic.

One thing that has always bothered me about rack systems is the difficulty
of getting good rear support. If you're lucky, you're installing a device
that matches the depth of the rack, which has a matching angle stock on the
rear. More typically, you'll have to kludge something together with angle
stock.

These things sit on the rack shelf so there's no issue with support.

If your gadgets are short, and you choose a short shelf, you may be able to
get away with front support only, but it will always be a little shaky.

I think two clamps on each unit should do it, maybe with a layer of
foam or rubber to grab a little better. Thanks for that idea about
the clamp & long screws!

[Mike Rivers]

reezekeys wrote:

The rack shelf is pre-drilled for a variety of 1/2-rack & 1/3-rack
units, which is probably useless to me unless I get lucky and have the
screw holes be where I need. I have my drill ready.

I'm guessing that the pros who do this have an accepted method.

Pros do what makes the most sense for the items involved. Sometimes it's
not necessary to secure the units, they just sit on the shelf. This is,
of course, not acceptable if the rack is going to be portable.
Pre-drilled and tapped holes in the bottom used to be somewhat common in
certain types of devices when it was thought that there was a good
chance that they'd be mounted in a rack, but with the trend today to
compact bedroom studios, racks are going out of fashing, and think of
all the money they can save by not putting extra holes in the bottom.

So you usually have to improvise and it's usually different for every
device. A lot of this stuff doesn't just have connectors on the rear and
controls on the front, there are often connectors on the sides, too, so
you have to accommodate those. When I had my remote truck, I made angle
brackets that attached to the sides of the equipment case, running
front-to-back, and screwed those down to a shelf. That worked for things
like video and audio cassette recorders.

Velcro works, too, particularly for light gear and a rack that isn't
moved much.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 2:13 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:

Pros do what makes the most sense for the items involved. Sometimes it's
not necessary to secure the units, they just sit on the shelf. This is,
of course, not acceptable if the rack is going to be portable.

Which it is. It's the SKB "Studio Flyer" which holds my laptop on the
top. So far I'm only driving to gigs, but I might have to fly someday
and would like to think my stuff is secure enough for that (I would
probably take the laptop out before it went in baggage!).

So you usually have to improvise and it's usually different for every
device. A lot of this stuff doesn't just have connectors on the rear and
controls on the front, there are often connectors on the sides, too, so
you have to accommodate those.

There's no controls I'll need to get to except maybe the on-off switch
for the drive enclosure, which I'll orient so that I can reach from
the back. I plan to bring all the connectors from the Emagic audio
interface out to connectors on a 1U panel I bought. It'll occupy one
of the two spaces, while a "mesh" panel will go in front of the shelf.
so the drive can get some air.

Velcro works, too, particularly for light gear and a rack that isn't
moved much.

I was also thinking of velcro, but wasn't sure if it was strong
enough, or how I would attach it. The sticky-back velcro tape
probably wouldn't work, it would need to wrap around, but ideally it
would have to be fastened to the shelf somehow.

Thanks for your input!

[Scott Dorsey]

reezekeys wrote:
The rack shelf is pre-drilled for a variety of 1/2-rack & 1/3-rack
units, which is probably useless to me unless I get lucky and have the
screw holes be where I need. I have my drill ready.

I'm guessing that the pros who do this have an accepted method. Any
tips are appreciated, thanks!

Take the feet or the screws off of the bottom of the thing you are mounting.
Line up the holes on it with the holes in the pre-drilled shelf. If you
cannot make them line up, drill more holes in the shelf. Put the screws
through the shelf and into the thing you are mounting.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[jakdedert]

reezekeys wrote:
On Nov 23, 2:13 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:

Pros do what makes the most sense for the items involved. Sometimes it's
not necessary to secure the units, they just sit on the shelf. This is,
of course, not acceptable if the rack is going to be portable.

Which it is. It's the SKB "Studio Flyer" which holds my laptop on the
top. So far I'm only driving to gigs, but I might have to fly someday
and would like to think my stuff is secure enough for that (I would
probably take the laptop out before it went in baggage!).

So you usually have to improvise and it's usually different for every
device. A lot of this stuff doesn't just have connectors on the rear and
controls on the front, there are often connectors on the sides, too, so
you have to accommodate those.

There's no controls I'll need to get to except maybe the on-off switch
for the drive enclosure, which I'll orient so that I can reach from
the back. I plan to bring all the connectors from the Emagic audio
interface out to connectors on a 1U panel I bought. It'll occupy one
of the two spaces, while a "mesh" panel will go in front of the shelf.
so the drive can get some air.

Velcro works, too, particularly for light gear and a rack that isn't
moved much.

I was also thinking of velcro, but wasn't sure if it was strong
enough, or how I would attach it. The sticky-back velcro tape
probably wouldn't work, it would need to wrap around, but ideally it
would have to be fastened to the shelf somehow.

Thanks for your input!

Get good Velcro, the industrial kind that comes in rolls. It'll stick,
especially if you do good surface prep (per instructions on the Velcro
package) and use a lot of it. You may find it works 'too good', making
it difficult to remove the gear. Hopefully the gear will be under
something else that will help hold it down; but I've had good luck with
(good) Velcro. That said, you might still want to incorporate some of
the other suggestions, including your own for backup.

If the gear is staying put for good (within reason), double-sided tape
(again the industrial-strength stuff) can work also.

Some drive enclosures have a back panel with connectors and pcb, which
is pretty much the entire unit. The rest is just 'enclosure'. In a
case (no pun intended) like that, you can mount the naked drive with
it's mounting holes through the shelf and 'hang' the pcb off the back of
it. Tack the cables down with the 'mounted' zip ties you mentioned.

jak

[Richard Crowley]

"reezekeys" wrote ...
No, no holes at all. It's a plastic rectangular box. The drive
enclosure is also plastic.

The more complete construction supply places ("Home Depot" et.al)
have a variety of metal plates used for framing to join pieces of wood
structurally. They are available in several different sizes and have lots
of pre-drilled holes.
http://www.strongtie.com/graphics/pr.../174i-2008.gif

I have used plates like these to clamp the equipment (cushioned by
that thin foam used for shipping) to the rack shelf. For mobile use,
be sure to use elastomeric nuts to prevent coming loose in transit.
http://www.the-house.com/dynamic/8mm-Locknut-thumb.jpg
Conventional lock-washers won't work in this kind of application.
Double nuts (a jam-nut) is an alternative to elastomeric nuts.

That sounds like a good idea. I seem to remember seeing thin strips
of steel with holes in them, that can be cut to be the top of a
clamp. Might be easier to get & cut to size than the plastic.

IMHO, larger plates are prefereable to thin strips. The framing plates
are available in many sizes so cutting may not be required at all.

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 3:43 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Take the feet or the screws off of the bottom of the thing you are mounting.
Line up the holes on it with the holes in the pre-drilled shelf. If you
cannot make them line up, drill more holes in the shelf. Put the screws
through the shelf and into the thing you are mounting.
--scott

Thanks Scott. Unfortunately there are no feet or screws on either of
the two things I'm mounting. That would have been the cleanest and
simplest way to do it!

[George's Pro Sound Company]

"reezekeys" wrote in message
...
On Nov 23, 3:43 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Take the feet or the screws off of the bottom of the thing you are
mounting.
Line up the holes on it with the holes in the pre-drilled shelf. If you
cannot make them line up, drill more holes in the shelf. Put the screws
through the shelf and into the thing you are mounting.
--scott

Thanks Scott. Unfortunately there are no feet or screws on either of
the two things I'm mounting. That would have been the cleanest and
simplest way to do it!

I sometimes use heavy duty grade velcro, ok for wiireless recievers, not ok
for power amplifiers

George

[[email protected]]

On Nov 23, 3:08*pm, reezekeys wrote:

I was also thinking of velcro, but wasn't sure if it was strong
enough, or how I would attach it. *The sticky-back velcro tape
probably wouldn't work, it would need to wrap around, but ideally it
would have to be fastened to the shelf somehow.

I use velcro for the kind of thing you're doing. There's only a
cursory amount that attaches the units to the case. Then, two long
strips come from either side and wrap around the unit twice and under
the shelf surface. Strips are superglued on one end to the sides of
the case. I sort of said what the hell on that one : ). But it
works with the strips wrapped during travel and unwrapped during use.

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 4:25 pm, jakdedert wrote:

Get good Velcro, the industrial kind that comes in rolls. It'll stick,
especially if you do good surface prep (per instructions on the Velcro
package) and use a lot of it. You may find it works 'too good', making
it difficult to remove the gear. Hopefully the gear will be under
something else that will help hold it down; but I've had good luck with
(good) Velcro. That said, you might still want to incorporate some of
the other suggestions, including your own for backup.

Thanks for the suggestion. I would think that you'd want velcro on
two perfectly flat surfaces to assure the best contact. The Emagic
interface has kind of a rounded design:

http://tinyurl.com/5a48ck

The drive enclosure uses some small rubber feet to raise it about
1/16" inch off the surface, so I assume the velcro would probably work
there, or I could just pull the feet off.

I'm a little hesitant with velcro since I may want to use these pieces
outside the rack, or maybe sell them, and it seems that applying the
velcro tape is pretty much a permanent alteration.

Some drive enclosures have a back panel with connectors and pcb, which
is pretty much the entire unit. The rest is just 'enclosure'. In a
case (no pun intended) like that, you can mount the naked drive with
it's mounting holes through the shelf and 'hang' the pcb off the back of
it.

Not this enclosure, it's "actively cooled" and has a fan & cooling
chambers to keep a drive extra cool.

http://tinyurl.com/6xupux

I appreciate your suggestions, thanks!

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 4:27 pm, "Richard Crowley" wrote:

The more complete construction supply places ("Home Depot" et.al)
have a variety of metal plates used for framing to join pieces of wood
structurally. They are available in several different sizes and have lots
of pre-drilled holes.http://www.strongtie.com/graphics/pr.../174i-2008.gif

I have used plates like these to clamp the equipment (cushioned by
that thin foam used for shipping) to the rack shelf. For mobile use,
be sure to use elastomeric nuts to prevent coming loose in transit.http://www.the-house.com/dynamic/8mm-Locknut-thumb.jpg
Conventional lock-washers won't work in this kind of application.
Double nuts (a jam-nut) is an alternative to elastomeric nuts.

That sounds like a good idea. I seem to remember seeing thin strips
of steel with holes in them, that can be cut to be the top of a
clamp. Might be easier to get & cut to size than the plastic.

IMHO, larger plates are prefereable to thin strips. The framing plates
are available in many sizes so cutting may not be required at all.

These are great suggestions, thanks! Too bad, I was in Home Depot
earlier today looking around for possible suggestions but didn't think
of going into that department.

I would have never thought of getting the elastomeric nuts either.

[Scott Dorsey]

reezekeys wrote:
On Nov 23, 3:43 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Take the feet or the screws off of the bottom of the thing you are mounting.
Line up the holes on it with the holes in the pre-drilled shelf. If you
cannot make them line up, drill more holes in the shelf. Put the screws
through the shelf and into the thing you are mounting.

Thanks Scott. Unfortunately there are no feet or screws on either of
the two things I'm mounting. That would have been the cleanest and
simplest way to do it!

A drill and some insert nuts can change that! If it's light enough you can
just stick it on with velcro or even RTV.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[reezekeys]

On Nov 23, 6:15 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
reezekeys wrote:
On Nov 23, 3:43 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Take the feet or the screws off of the bottom of the thing you are mounting.
Line up the holes on it with the holes in the pre-drilled shelf. If you
cannot make them line up, drill more holes in the shelf. Put the screws
through the shelf and into the thing you are mounting.

Thanks Scott. Unfortunately there are no feet or screws on either of
the two things I'm mounting. That would have been the cleanest and
simplest way to do it!

A drill and some insert nuts can change that! If it's light enough you can
just stick it on with velcro or even RTV.

Yes velcro seems like the way to go. Heckuva lot easier than drilling
holes. Thanks again for the suggs.

[Bigguy[_3_]]

reezekeys wrote:
I bought a 1U rack shelf and need to mount a 3.5" eSATA enclosure and
an Emagic 26 audio interface to it. I've been through some hardware
stores and arts & crafts supply places looking for ideas. So far I've
seen aluminum strips I can make u-brackets from, velcro strips, and
long wire ties with small mounting blocks that you pass them through.
I've also looked around the Markertek web site and some other sites
that deal with racks but haven't seen anything there. None of the
options I've seen look ideal, although the u-brackets would probably
be the most workable (what I saw was 1/8" thick 1-inch wide aluminum
strips, probably overkill for this job).

The rack shelf is pre-drilled for a variety of 1/2-rack & 1/3-rack
units, which is probably useless to me unless I get lucky and have the
screw holes be where I need. I have my drill ready.

I'm guessing that the pros who do this have an accepted method. Any
tips are appreciated, thanks!
Rackshelf and velcro...

Guy