My Raspberry Pi 6 node 1U rack mount cluster
Now that I have a half-height rack and a 3D Printer, I figured I should finally move all my Raspberry Pis from sitting in odd places in my office to the rack. And what better way than to print my own 1U Raspberry Pi Rack mount unit?
The rack unit you see above was assembled from 6 'frames', 6 hot-swappable Pi carrier trays, 2 rack mount ears, and a couple lengths of threaded rod for rigidity.
It was printed from these plans from russross on Thingiverse; Russ Ross also made an assembly video, and shows how you can build a 2U 12-Pi enclosure using the same basic design, with interchangeable Pi trays!
Firstly, I should note that I still consider myself a 3D Printing novice. It's not like you can go to the store, buy a 3D Printer, unbox it, plug it in, and get good prints right away. Even the more expensive models require a lot of 'tuning' to get right, and that assumes you also know at least a decent amount about slicing and at least have rudimentary 3D CAD skills!
My first attempt at printing the frame resulted in the printer trying to bridge 10cm gaps and printing on air. It tried, but I've found time and time again, if you ask the printer to do the impossible, it'll blindly trust your input, no matter the result:
