Another 3D Printed Rack Design (with files!)

[bwees]

This is my new rack setup that I made this week. Everything 3d printed and designed by me, though inspiration for project came from @mrp-yt. The goal was for it to be able to be picked up moved wherever I’m at, plugged into power, internet (Ethernet or WiFi) and all of my services fire up and are accessible publicly with Cloudflare tunnels or privately with Tailscale.

It has:

• Gl.iNet ax1300 travel router (allows me to connect to WiFi and serve it as Ethernet to clients in rack)
• 8 port gigabit dlink switch
• HP Prodesk with 7th gen i5, 32gb of ram, 256gb ssd for boot and a 2tb Samsung T7 for mass storage). I have a right angle usb cable coming for the T7 Friday 😅
• A usb-c charging hub for powering rack.
  • This is my favorite part, every item in rack is powered via USB-c. It turns out Kensington locks make great usb-c jack cutouts. The hp prodesk (20v) and the dlink switch (5v) were modified to use usb-c PD for power. Got some usbc pd breakouts from Amazon and a few 3d printed mounts designed for each and it works beautifully.
  • I think it would be cool to see this idea expand to other racks, making a 10" UPS wouldn't be that bad and would remove the DC -> AC conversion issues since you would just need to power a bunch of USB-C Ports.

Planning on building a 4tb SSD nas for the bottom of rack later this year but the 2tb ssd is plenty for some media and config storage.

All of the files and such are on Printables: https://www.printables.com/model/1170708-modular-10-rack

[bwees]

Heres some info about the USB-C Conversion:

Iif you have a multimeter you can usually figure out what is +/- on the DC power jack. I essentially just solder wires to the power pins I need, then I get one of these PD trigger boards from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D5QRDLQV) and set the voltage I need (5v, 9v, 12v, 15v, 20v). I then make a small 3D printed bracket that is custom for each device, they are on Printables. Sometimes there's some hot glue involved to make sure the port doesn't move 🙃.

Specifically for the Prodesk, the power adapter is 19v but it can handle 20v comfortably. HP has a proprietary power jack configuration that has an ID pin so the PC can determine if the power brick plugged into it has sufficient current (it uses the same jack as their old laptop chargers). You can trick the computer into thinking there is an ID pin by adding a 330k ohm resistor between VCC (20v) and the sense pin. More details about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7kLNmF4qVY

As for getting a cutout for the usb-c jack, I usually look for a Kensington lock hole and then Dremel it out slightly bigger with a grinding bit, usually takes 5 minutes. For mounting, I try and look for a nearby PCB screw and design my jack mount to utilize that. For the prodesk, there was no good place to mount to so I made a mount that strattled the Ethernet jack and then used a good amount of hotglue. If I was plugging/unplugging that USB-C frequently I would have done something better but I'm not gonna be unplugging it frequently with it in the rack now.

[mrp-yt]

Thank you for the shout-out!

Your setup looks amazing—so neat and tidy compared to my monster! :)

When the day comes for me to reprint handles for my setup, I'll definitely use your STL files. Your version of the handles looks much stronger and more reliable!

[bwees]

Thank you for the shout-out!

Your setup looks amazing—so neat and tidy compared to my monster! :)

When the day comes for me to reprint handles for my setup, I'll definitely use your STL files. Your version of the handles looks much stronger and more reliable!

Thanks! I got impatient waiting for you to post your files so I did a 4 hour CAD session and came up with this! The handles are pretty easy to print and only requires support on build plate. We will see how well it holds up, everything is PLA on the frame right now.

[mrp-yt]

@bwees
You got this done in 4 hours? NICE!
It took me 4 weeks to finish mine :)

Yeah, I’m a bit slow when it comes to publishing. I wanted to make sure all the parts fit together perfectly and everything fits inside.

Now, I just need to organize all the STL files before publishing. My STL folder for this project is a complete mess—I’ve got like 20 different versions of the same file!

If you’re wondering, I did an edit-update to show the final almost version [ #55 ].

[bwees]

Nice! The pegboard style thing is quite nice for power adapters, I was going to do something similar for velcro straps before I decided that the USB-C method would be easiest. Ill likely end up with a small APC UPS to go next to it until someone makes a solid 10in rack UPS.

[bwees]

Heres some more internal photos of the USB-C Power mod