MOTM

Your message brings a good chuckle.  Remember, this is an addiction, 
not a hobby.  You **will** need to continue to add modules and a full 
cabinet brings on a minor panic attack.

My first cabinet was a 20U rack using the rails and room at the 
bottom for 2U of standard rack gear.  The power supply mounted in the 
rear so I had a full 20U for modules. I didn't even get my first 
order of modules built before I had it full!  Then I added a 10U 
expansion rack on top.  I made both of these out of pine and covered 
them in tolex with chrome corners. Photos and drawings at the bottom 
of
http://modularsynthesis.com/cabinet/cabinet.htm

I then decided to build three 1x24U wood cabinets. Rather than deal 
with angled and straight cabinets, I built them all straight and used 
towers with pivots to be able to angle each cabinet. I have the 
bottom cabinet pointed up and the top cabinet pointing down. The 
bottom cabinet is up about 6" so it is above the height of the 
keyboard. 3U x 24U is about the maximum I can comfortably reach when 
using the synth.  By the time I had the cabinets built I had about 
75% of the top cabinet empty. I finished a 1/4" piece of birch to use 
to fill the empty space. Every time I bought a new module, I just cut 
1.75" off of the filler strip.

I ran out of room and then started using my original cabinet as a 
side wing. Now that has only 1U remaining and I'm going to have to 
build another side wing.

Each cabinet has it's own power supply and I have a 2U panel in the 
rear for slaving AC power to each cabinet from a single main switch.

The side wing cabinets each have their own power supply and switch. 
Photos of these cabinets are on the same page. I allowed 1/16" 
clearance around the 1x24U spacing. 1/4" foam on the sides blocks the 
gap. The Stooge rails cover the gap along the top and bottom.

The rotation works well although I should have the pivot points 
towards the front of the cabinet as that is where all the weight is.

I bought 5/16" screws (still have a bunch) and 1/16" plastic washers 
to mount each module.

Dave

--- In motm@yahoogroups.com, Jeff Laity <synthetic@...> wrote:
>
> I'm planning to build my own cabinet for a MOTM system. My first
> spec for modules came up with 35u.