Braced Shelf, 2U

A 2U shelf for our 10-inch rack, 60 to 220 mm deep, with a vented floor and a front aperture you can open right up. At a low wall height and a wide aperture it is a shelf; wind the wall up and it is a tray that holds a device in place.

The brace is the shelf. Printed rack shelves droop, and the usual answer is a separate strut under the floor — which reaches below the shelf and fouls the unit beneath. Here each side wall is the full height of the unit at the front and tapers back to nothing, so the gusset lives inside the 2U envelope. That takes the root section from about 250 mm⁴ for a bare plate to about 176,000, and the eight bolts into the bezel carry the floor’s moment as a couple over 66 mm of lever rather than as one shear line.

Prints in three pieces: two bezel halves that lap at the unit line, and the floor, which is 220 mm wide and prints flat.

In the box: all three pieces, eight M4 heat-set inserts pressed before shipping, and eight M4 x 10 screws.

Choose: depth, wall height, aperture and floor venting.