Power strip

jcaut

I know: A pretty mundane sounding project. Nevertheless, this turned out well enough that I wanted to show somebody.

I've been wanting a power strip that I could put on an audio rack with some other components. When I saw Partsexpress had these buyout rack-mountable strips for ~$17, I thought that was just the ticket, so I bought one. There weren't any dimensions listed, and when it arrived I was surprised to see that it was less than 4" front-to-back. Fine for rack-mounting, I guess, but not really what I had in mind, as I wanted to sit it On the rack, like a regular component. Maybe sit something on top of it, etc.

Anyway, I built a center section out of MDF to go between the front and back "halves" of the strip, to make it deeper, like a typical component. Finished it with the infamous truck bed liner, and a couple of strips of red oak for side panels. Re-wired it internally such that one receptacle is switched and the others are always on.

This proved to be a difficult thing to show in pictures, but it looks really nice.

Early B.

Very nice work!

brettw22

Looks very good......

My only concern would be if you should have any sort of potential short inside, the last thing you'd want around sparks is wood........but definitely, looks good.

jcaut

brettw22 wrote:

My only concern would be if you should have any sort of potential short inside, the last thing you'd want around sparks is wood........but definitely, looks good.

Yeah, I thought about that... My only real concern would be with the switch, which is sitting right on the MDF. The other connections and wiring inside is really solid/overdone, and all the wiring I did inside to extend the case is soldered, taped, and heat-shrinked.

I might look into some sort of metal shielding to go around the switch, just in case.

Thanks for the comments.

Jason

dorokusai

Jason - It looks real cool. If a fire is going to happen, it will happen regardless of wood being present....no worries.