Here's a full write-up on the first year of my Home-Lab: https://piefed.social/post/1002037
Since then I've now added networking and a self built 10" rack, I was undecided between MikroTik and UniFi but ended up going UniFI and I'm quite happy.
Building the 2020 Aluminum profile 10" server rack was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot of lessons along the way like:
- Cutting perfectly straight with a hacksaw is a bitch and nearly impossible (or at least for me) would not recommend.
- Buy a table/mitre saw or have them pre-cut
- Tapping threads yourself is a lot of fun, and I would recommend doing it yourself, worked perfectly every time.
- Bolt length and head size matters, even 1mm matters (that's what she said)
It's janky I know, but I love it and it's a lot less Janky than when everything was just on my desk
Next step for me would be to buy a 3D Printer (Sovol S6 Plus Ace) and print custom racks for everything
Shout out to https://www.motedis.com/ for the Aluminum parts, they can cut and tap all the parts to your desired length if you don't want to bother with that, but that's half the fun (and frustration)
How stable is this rack? Would that be a good frame for building a 3d printer table?
I have an FDM printer (Ender 3 clone) that is mostly 2020 aluminum extrusion as the frame. A few years ago I found some 2020 on sale and built a set of shelves for my wife’s plants out of it. (Now - I know. It’s not the most economical use of materials, but it was the middle of winter, and I didn’t want to go work in the garage. Plus the 2020 was on sale.) It’ll support a slew of plants over a 4-foot span (~3.2m) without any sagging or other concerns. It can be wobbly side to side, but that’s a matter of bracing and connectors.
I'm pretty sure I can stand on it without issues, if I add some corner plates it would be even stronger.
But when in doubt you can always go for 3030 or 4040 which would be really strong, you can probably park a motorcycle on those
Extruded aluminum of that type is insanely stable and easy enough to build for a reasonably handy person.
You only need a cheap cutoff saw and a drill, or you can order pre-cut and ore-drilled pieces to order.
There are a number of makers of extruded aluminum building systems, basically tinkertoys for adults. I have personal experience using 80/20 and the Tslots brands. They are functionally identical.
I have used it to build stands for heavy equipment like ultra-cold freezers for labs. It is more than sufficient for any server racking.
My old FDM printer frame and I think most are made of extruded aluminium exactly like this. Extremely sturdy and can be adjusted very finely with machine screws