PCB Rack:
I recently got tired of having a lot of my arcade game PCBs lying around my work room and my basement waiting to fall over or get stepped on and broken so I finally decided to do something about it. I realize that some collectors amass so many PCBs that my solution would not be practical for them but for me it was exactly what I needed. I made a wooden box that is roughly 2' x 2' x 2' and that has 10 slots for vertical dividers to create spaces for PCBs. The box also has 1/5" castors on the bottom so it's easy to move around.
I made a simple 2D CAD drawing that you can use as a guide if you want to make one of your own.
PCB Rack box PDF drawing : PCB_Rack.pdf
The box consists of the following materials:
- 2x sheets 48" x 24" x 3/4" birch laminated plywood (1 sheet = 1 side and top, 1 sheet = 1 side and bottom).
- 1x sheet 24" x 24" x 1/4" plywood (back) .
- 10x sheets 24" x 24" x 1/8" handyboard (dividers).
- 4x 1.5" castor wheels and 16x #10 x 3/4" panhead wood screws.
- 1x 8' x 3/4" wooden molding strip (front edge decoration optional) .
- wood glue
- wood stain
- clear Varathane
Here's the box without the dividers installed. The dividers just slide into the slots that are spaced 2" apart. The dividers keep the fragile PCBs from leaning on each other and they also make it easy to remove or insert boards without having to move any of the other boards around. If a specific PCB assembly is too wide to fit into a conpartment, it's easy to just pull out any divider to make the space larger.
I'm obviously no master cabinet maker but considering the cheap materials and my limited tools, I think that it turned out pretty nice.
Here's the box with the dividers installed. The rightmost one was stained so it's darker in color. I haven't gotten around to staining the others yet.
The box is finished and sitting in my work room with some PCBs bagged and safely stowed. It sure is nice to be able to have someplace safe to set them down where I can grab them any time I want. Before I had the box, the PCBs were often leaning against each other and sitting on the floor leaning against a wall or filing cabinet or something. I always had to be careful to not hit them while walking around or moving my chairs and stuff. No worries anymore!
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