DIN rails aren’t very common in hobby projects, although you do see them occasionally. But in some industries, they are everywhere. The rail is just a piece of aluminum or steel with slots to hold it to a wall or bulkhead. There are two small lips that equipment like circuit breakers, power supplies, or controllers can attach easily. A common 3D printing project is a way to mount something like a printer controller to DIN rails. [NotLikeALeafOnThe Wind] shows a different take on it: a magnetic holder that temporarily attaches a rail to a ferrous surface.
Of course, mounting the rail is only half the equation. After that, you still need things to mount on the rail. Luckily, there’s no shortage of designs for DIN mounts for many common boards and modules.
There are several versions of the design. One has two ears that hold the magnets. Another has a similar design but can mount two rails. If you can’t spare the space, another design holds the rail but adds very little width to the assembly. Honestly, we wondered if you could take a bit of rail and just epoxy magnets to the back of it, but these certainly look nicer and give you a bit of clearance, too.
What does DIN stand for? Find out all about the DIN rail in our deep dive. We do occasionally see them in hobby projects.
Well holding those little parts boxes you may see them.
DIN means Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. – English : Germany Institute for Standardization (registered association).
My Michael Caine moment. “Not a lot of people know that”.
My din rail clips are the best! I design mine so they have a screw driver tab and take little motion to release. Plus they go back to shape and can be reused many times. No trying to tut my own horn. lol
Do you have them posted anywhere? Would love to check them out!
I made some 3d printed SMT strip holders that have DIN on them. It was fairly easy to print. I actually just used a model of a DIN clip I found online and merged it to the design I was modifying (The strip holder was designed by someone else then I modified it shorter and added the clip)
Here is a pic https://flic.kr/p/2mZXpte
Before I made that I created a mount that hooked to some off the shelf DIN clips which I use to hold my Smoothieboard v2 on my printer. https://flic.kr/p/2mXtBWz
Certainly worth the time to hack around with. DIN rail is cheap and handy.
For DIN rail equipment, there is a sort-of “standard” release mechanism. You come in with a flat screwdriver from the front. There is a tab that can be levered away and this releases the module. Works well, even if a rail is fully packed. Your green holders have such a release tab mechanism, but it is not accessible when installed.
Your design seems to be missing this. How should anybody remove the thing again without breaking it?
The printed version for the most part is a copy of the green holders. Same tab is there. I quite literally just found a random STEP file of one of them.
Might not be accessible but they are there :) I usually pop them off with a long hex wrench.
Plastic Din rail adapters by phoenix contact are 90pence each , i use them a lot at work to mount flat plates and much more to din rail …. gotta love 3d printing..but ..kiss rules.