We (well, some of us) are complete suckers for things that are both much smaller and much larger than life. And if that thing actually does what its supposed to? Squee! So naturally, we rushed to bring you news of this mini NUC rack designed by [Jeremy Weatherford].
Inspiration comes from a lot of places, often times from stuff that lives on your desk. [Jeremy] had a pile of NUCs and thought they resembled a mini rack already, so why not build them one to live in? It was the perfect excuse to learn CAD, so off [Jeremy] went. Although this is a mini rack, the parts were too big to print. Another opportunity presented itself, and [Jeremy] tried out an online service to get the acrylic cut.
Assembly may have been fiddly with super glue all over the nice black acrylic, but [Jeremy] learned an important tip: excess glue can be removed with vegetable oil. Once it was built, he decided to make it into a control system lab and even found a perfect little five-port switch to top it off. The logo plate, of course, is the icing on this cake.
If you prefer your tower of mini-computers to be extruded, we covered a clever design from [Jay Doscher] back in May.
My 1st impression: “cool, that’s a great way to reuse a 4U wall mount rack!”.
I wouldn’t use acrylic, though: it’s brittle, it easily breaks and it can be dangerous.
I have 0 experience with acrylic but I always assumed it was much stronger than glass and very flexible. It never struck to me as a brittle material
You’re probably thinking of polycarbonate (EG Lexan). Acrylic tends to shatter.
I would’ve looked for pre-drilled angle iron to use for the mounting holes;
yes, I know it wouldn’t utilize the screw hole spacing of a full size rack, but I would make it work.
dangerous? you mean the sharp shards after it breaks? or is there a hazard i don’t know about?
thanks
Mostly because it can break in many sharp pieces. There are much better plastic materials around that can be used more safely as they would rather bend than break, or break in a much less dangerous way. One problem though is that acrylic is the most transparent I’m aware of, and for sure it’s among the most beautiful to build enclosures with, so if one needs transparency acrylic might become a must. I would however explore the idea of very thin transparent adhesive foil (not unlike LCD screen covers protection) that would keep the acrylic bits together in case it breaks.
You can buy a mini 10″ rack.
https://loganmarchione.com/2022/09/homelab-10-mini-rack-shelves/
I just bought one for my Pis. It’s totes adorbs.
How are you powering your PIs? I want to avoid wall warts
You can do either PoE or a USB Hub!
Pis do require a lot of current also because of their low voltage, so I believe a active PoE splitter would be mandatory, and that inflates costs if one has to buy one for each Pi. If they’re used mostly through WiFi or Ethernet to build servers, there would be no reasons not to parallel their supply cables bringing them to a single beefy power supply, as Ethernet already has galvanic isolation built in. Just remember to use unshielded Ethernet connectors on the Pi side and ground them at the switch side. And don’t connect the Pis together through any other port.
Yes I have put in a few 10 inch racks for family and friends who’s network needs are not that high.
Hmm. None of those components are actually NUCs, are they? They are just NUC-size.
Not sure what pics you’re looking at? In this post, the first pic has a NUC on the bottom and the second pic has 2 NUCs…
Ah. OK. They don’t look like the metallic NUCs of old. I thought they were Bee-Links.
like other commenters, i would not have sent away for cut acrylic. my feeling when something is too big for the printer is to use hardware store goodies — dowel rod, thin plywood, pipe…maybe drill or glue or add brackets maybe 3d print some brackets. but whatever.
my real objection is i don’t see the point. prior to 2019, i had a tower pc in the corner of my livingroom, under a custom-built table-cabinet that held up a 20″ CRT and successfully hid the pc and all its cables from toddlers. it was huge, about 2ft x 2ft and extending almost 5ft tall and really didn’t allow the corner of the room to be used for anything else at all. then i replaced it with a wall-mounted 32″ lcd and a small classic end table with: a dvd player, a nuc, a raspberry pi, a nintendo switch, an nvidia shield tv, a pile of charging tablets, and a pile of videogame controllers, and even a pile of books.
the new pile, despite having so much in it, is a lot smaller than the old PC. and a lot less tight and cluttered too. so much so that the raspberry pi simply sits in a cardboard shoebox underneath the table. there’s no point putting it in a smaller case because there’s just so much room, when computers are this small! so if i did have 4 more nucs, i would simply blindly reach under the table and set them there thoughtlessly, and there would still be plenty of room! i would just pile them askew and not think anything of it. the thing is, out of that whole pile, the only thing that causes any trouble is the videogame controllers.
but! i’m not just full of negativity :) there’s a hack there! i nailed a strip of like 1/2″ x 1/4″ dimensional lumber around the edge of the end table to make an elevated rim. now when my kids push around the pile of controllers to make room for another, they don’t push them off the edge of the table. they catch against the rim.
we all have different needs from a hack :)
I think this would be a perfect project for send cut send you wouldn’t have to pay that much because you could get very thin sheet and bend it yourself.