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A Rack of My Own

 2 min A rolling workstation that kept the screens, computers, and cabling together whenever I moved.
Published

Apr 6, 2013

A custom vertical rack with one landscape monitor above two portrait monitors, computer cases below, and equipment and cables behind the screens.

The rack in use, with Halo 4 above the desktop.

I moved often, and inside a house we rearranged the rooms a lot too. The rack traveled with me through many houses and was always built to be moved. The point was to keep the screens, computers, cables, and power equipment together: unplug one assembly, roll or load it, then plug it back in somewhere else.

I made this rack from a tall utility-shelving frame, then put it on cart-style casters over a larger wooden base. The computer and power equipment sat at the bottom. Their weight kept the whole thing stable.

The screens occupied the front. One landscape display sat above two portrait displays in this photograph, and at one point the rack probably carried four or five displays in all. The computers sat below, with more equipment on the shelving behind them.

The lower pair made a nearly square desktop. A browser and terminals shared it, while Halo 4 filled the screen overhead. Putting the screens one above another let the equipment grow upward in a narrow part of the room.

Pull-out arms let the main television swing around. I avoided extending every arm at once, but none of the mounts sagged or slipped. Mostly I just whacked myself a few times by walking into a screen I had left out.