Making the hard drive rack

I did this two weeks ago, but I was too busy to write anything until now. Here I make the rack for the hard drives. I'll be having only two HDDs but there's room for two or maybe three more.

After cutting the pieces to length and grinding the paint and rust off the welding surfaces, I used those magnets to hold the pieces together so I could snap a small weld to hold the pieces together and then finish the joint. With the first part I made a little mistake and welded the top side first. When the weld cooled down, it also shrunk and pulled the piece off the intented angle.


The next piece I welded on the other side and it didn't bend at all.


Here's how much the rack was twisted.


Then I clamped the piece down to the table and used the magnet to hold the other rail in place. This way I got it as straight as possible.


I welded the top sides too and then grinded the excess material away to make the base straight and nice.


Here's the rack ready for test fit. I had to put it into a vice and twist it a bit to make it straight. It's not perfectly straight, but good enough for now.


HDD in place with the padding. Fits like a glove. I'm going to cut the padding a bit so the drive sits there nicely and doesn't bend the padding that much.


I took the padding off and here's how much room there is on each side. I'm pretty happy how this turned out. Later I drilled holes on each side of the rails for the M6 thread bars. I'll have a padded bracket on top fastened by wing nuts to hold the drives in place.