I wish I could sent you a picture of a closet that we installed some Cisco 3850's in using rackstuds, but due to company policy I cannot. After about 18 months, the rackstuds snapped, and our switches were sitting at a 45 degree angle. I'm not sure if the heat over that time caused their strength to diminish, but a 3850 is not a heavy switch....certainly not 85 lbs. Bottom line, we don't use them anymore
plastics do creep (already on typical room temperatures and below), which means they plastically deform under constant load over time. Then they can break if they reach a maximum strain. The short time load can be orders of magnitude higher than the long time load if creepage is considered. This is a bigger problem for plastics but can also be for steel (but mostly on higher temperatures, in example pressurized tubes in heat exchangers like in power plants).
I got 3 3750s held up with mine. A HP KVM switch A shelf with 4 NAS boxes. A shelf for whatever get laid up on it. A drawer full of spare drives. All held up with Rackstuds for just over 3 years. Not one single issue.
@@stonecrow00 yeah i think longterm heat may be the issue, from what I've seen, several people have told me (not on YT) they have had no problems at normal room temps
I know i'm late to this discussion but i've had an ASR9910 mounted on these for several years now without issue. (I am using all 36 holes per side so that helps) - but that router has got to be 300 lbs easy.
Thanks for the demonstration! I’d love more content around building/planning your first rack. Edit: Just noticed the video from four days ago for exactly that! Thanks again for all the excellent content!
I'm actually pretty impressed by the amount of weight it can hold. I still wouldn't use it for battery backups (UPS) or large servers and it also use special rails. Cool video!
Been using these in my home rack for a while now (couple of years roughly) and no problems at all. They were holding a Norco RPC-4224 full of drives, had no problem at all with it and never broke, and that sucker weighed what felt like a ton. I did figure out that if you overtighten the black cover they will snap :) For general use and installed properly, these should be fine. But if your rack is moving and shelf is bowing from the weight of whatever it is, then all bets are off :) As always, love the videos from Lawrence Systems :)
I have had all kinds of racks, and, I can tell you, the racks with 10-32 tapped holes will hold whatever you put on them. I suspect you can load the shelf until either the rack tips over, or the shelf tears apart. The screws will not break though.
Nice followup to the Home Rack video, but I'm still advising the use of 'server rails' that mount to both the front and rear vertical rails (fasteners of choice). Heavy equipment and rack studs do not make sense in earthquake territory! Back in the Olden Days, we would buy steel angle bracket stock at the hardware store since rack vendors didn't usually make those nice adjustable rails.
with at least several companies now making these, it is important to state that different plastic formulations will break at different weights-- great video though, I am impressed... I have seen metal screws and inserts break off with less-- Thanks
we need the distance from the top edge to the center of the lower rack stud, as well as the depth of the shelf. That would allow calculating the pull force on the rack studs.
Would be awesome to see how they'd work with full depth rails. the universal ones you have just put a piece of plywood and see how much they can take to see if a server could be mounted.
This is not meant as a criticism it's just a pet peve when someone does this: "This is not scientific" Next sentence: I'm going to test something by experimenting measuring and documenting what happens. That is the literal definition of scientific!
There is famous meme by Adam Savage saying that difference of doing science and just screwing around is writing it down. However, real science must follow scientific method. Just gathering data points and observations isn't science (yet). Whole point of science is to form a theory. In this case it would be about tensile strength of polymer. Physics about forces involved would need to understood as well to get any meaningful data point. The goal is to increase knowledge and understanding of how things actually work (ultimately getting into atom interactions). Then second step is to generalize this knowledge so that it can be applied to anything. Forming a theory about plastics (or rather polymer). So yes, it is totally accurate to say that this isn't scientific test. It really isn't. That said, it is practical test providing simple information about something where factors are fairly controlled. That is very useful and interesting even if we don't reach realm of science yet.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS (And @shadowmancer, @MikeQuinn) Please go watch the famous Richard Feynman one minute video on the scientific method. ua-cam.com/video/OL6-x0modwY/v-deo.html In simple terms: * Make a guess about the real world * Calculate consequence(s) of your guess * Go look at reality, and compare * If it doesn't match, you're WRONG That's it. Doesn't require degrees, fancy equipment, etc etc. In this case, your guess was: we think Rack Studs hold plenty of weight. We think it will hold way more than 25 pounds. Your reality: it held over 80 lb. Comparison: yep, it worked! It isn't "more scientific" or "good science" to measure to five digits, nor to calculate all the forces involved. Now, I could make another guess or two: * In an 8.0 earthquake, a heavy bit of equipment might cause a problem... but then you have other issues :) * If there's significant temp swings, or pollution, perhaps the plastic degrades over time? (Hopefully the mfg knows :) ) --> (I do a lot of outdoor stuff. Turns out most zip tie material will NOT handle outdoor freeze-thaw temp swings very long...)
This test only tested the tensile strength of the rack studs. The other element to test is the shear strength (straight down) as would be applicable if all four corners were used.
I was someone who asked for this, so thank you a bunch! I honestly would have guessed maybe half of that, haha. Thankfully I don't have anything this heavy that I plan on trying to hold up with just studs, so I'm really happy knowing it's no issue.
Been using Rackstudz for a while and always wanted to see what they failed at, not had anything get close to the limit but they are a really good product
Obviously in a real-world scenario, you wouldn't have shelves externally mounted like that and and certainly not loaded with any heavy equipment sticking out the front/rear of your rack. If you were to mount heavy equipment like a rail-mounted server, UPS or have equipment sitting on a full-length shelf, you could always have the rack studs on the front and rear, or on the front only and have the regular cage nuts supporting the rear. Personally, I prefer to have the rack studs to give a standard conformity to the look of my rack when viewing from the front rather than viewing a bunch of black or silver or mixture of both, bolts that can also have different sized heads based on what was supplied with the installed equipment. The best thing I like about the rack studs is that as they are a perfect fit to the RU holes of a rack to ensure a consistent fit of mounted equipment, whereas the regular cage nuts have some level of play resulting in some equipment not sitting properly within its RU, likely forcing a readjustment of other equipment.
It looks like 80 lbs would have failed too, if left alone for a lunch break. Regardless, I'm having a hard time thinking of when I might want to ever put more than 20-30 lbs on a shelf like that under real world conditions (not a lot of bench weights in my racks) so they would be plenty strong for the things I normally use them for (a NAS or two, maybe some extra patch cables). I was thinking they would only be good for shelves across all four posts. This was good information, thank you.
How deep is the rack? Your putting more strain on the shelf because the weights are forward creating a moment. I have some UPS that come in at 100 lbs. They hold just fine with cage nuts. The rack makes a difference as well. Some lower cost racks have a lot of flex. Panduit makes some really solid racks that don't flex or wobble. The side bracing helps a lot.
Now i want to see normal weight for some time and see how much time till they snap. At my work we have stuff on cage nuts mounted for easily more than 10 years.
I've never heard of these, why use these over cage nuts? Hell, i still have to deal with threaded hole racks for a lot of my stuff. :( Square hole racks and cage nuts are what i aim for when i'm allowed to replace a rack.
What about a 4 post shelf? Something like amzn.to/36xpBtN ? Prolly a bit much for another video, but I'd imagine it'd be much higher. I'm using one of these to support a Netapp DS4486 using standard racknuts and I can tell you that chassis + halfway populated with drives is super heavy.
When I first saw Rackstuds, yes I thought they were 'cool', but no, there's no way I would trust my thousands of dollars of equipment with these. Yes, the servers would be evenly distributed front to rear by the server rails screwed to the front and rear rack rails, but switches and NVRs are only screwed to the front rack rails. I cringe when I think of trusting my fully populated Cisco 4510R+E chassis switch to these nylon/plastic studs. Nothing like trusting a 5 figure $ switch to $50 plastic studs. While no, my equipment will not be mounted the way it was in the video, and yes it held quite a bit of weight, I'll continue to use metal rack studs and screws, and therefore will never have to tell the Superintendents that $100,000 work of equipment just took a dive because I wanted to try mounting them with plastic screws.
4:53 Rack studs: 85lbs (broken at).
6:25 Cage nuts: 105lbs - held but not recommended (shelf is bowing).
The True Hero!💯
85 pounds = 38.555 KGs :)
The shelf is only advertised to hold 50 lbs I believe so those plastic studs are totally fine to pair with the shelf. Thanks for the test, good info.
I wish I could sent you a picture of a closet that we installed some Cisco 3850's in using rackstuds, but due to company policy I cannot. After about 18 months, the rackstuds snapped, and our switches were sitting at a 45 degree angle. I'm not sure if the heat over that time caused their strength to diminish, but a 3850 is not a heavy switch....certainly not 85 lbs.
Bottom line, we don't use them anymore
Yeah I found they don't like tropical or saharan heat - same problem - delayed failure
Might be OK in an airflowed A/C facility
plastics do creep (already on typical room temperatures and below), which means they plastically deform under constant load over time. Then they can break if they reach a maximum strain. The short time load can be orders of magnitude higher than the long time load if creepage is considered. This is a bigger problem for plastics but can also be for steel (but mostly on higher temperatures, in example pressurized tubes in heat exchangers like in power plants).
I got 3 3750s held up with mine.
A HP KVM switch
A shelf with 4 NAS boxes.
A shelf for whatever get laid up on it.
A drawer full of spare drives.
All held up with Rackstuds for just over 3 years. Not one single issue.
@@stonecrow00 yeah i think longterm heat may be the issue, from what I've seen, several people have told me (not on YT) they have had no problems at normal room temps
I know i'm late to this discussion but i've had an ASR9910 mounted on these for several years now without issue. (I am using all 36 holes per side so that helps) - but that router has got to be 300 lbs easy.
Thanks for the demonstration! I’d love more content around building/planning your first rack.
Edit: Just noticed the video from four days ago for exactly that! Thanks again for all the excellent content!
Yes! Just posted that the other day which led to this video.
These are probably really good for quick installs of patch panels, switches and cable managment units.
Finally i can show my skeptical work colleagues that they are not that bad.
I have a very skeptical friend. I'm 100% sure he'd say it's crap. now I have a good video to prove him wrong ;)
I'd read coreywangler's comment about Cisco 3850's mounted on rackstuds and them snapping after 18 months first.
@@killer2600 yeah, I did
I'm actually pretty impressed by the amount of weight it can hold. I still wouldn't use it for battery backups (UPS) or large servers and it also use special rails. Cool video!
Brilliant, cool to see that the shelves themself can take a lot more than I thought. Also impressed by the rack studs!
Me too, maybe I will order a pack :)
It would be interesting to test the new /dev/mount from patchbox in the same manner. Since they are metal I would expect them to perform better.
Been using these in my home rack for a while now (couple of years roughly) and no problems at all. They were holding a Norco RPC-4224 full of drives, had no problem at all with it and never broke, and that sucker weighed what felt like a ton. I did figure out that if you overtighten the black cover they will snap :)
For general use and installed properly, these should be fine. But if your rack is moving and shelf is bowing from the weight of whatever it is, then all bets are off :)
As always, love the videos from Lawrence Systems :)
I now have confidence for my low power home lab, thank you.
I have had all kinds of racks, and, I can tell you, the racks with 10-32 tapped holes will hold whatever you put on them. I suspect you can load the shelf until either the rack tips over, or the shelf tears apart. The screws will not break though.
Thanks Tom, good to see a real world test for the cantilever shelf with the rack studs
Nice followup to the Home Rack video, but I'm still advising the use of 'server rails' that mount to both the front and rear vertical rails (fasteners of choice). Heavy equipment and rack studs do not make sense in earthquake territory!
Back in the Olden Days, we would buy steel angle bracket stock at the hardware store since rack vendors didn't usually make those nice adjustable rails.
NICE! thank you for both the knowledge and entertainment.
with at least several companies now making these, it is important to state that different plastic formulations will break at different weights--
great video though, I am impressed... I have seen metal screws and inserts break off with less--
Thanks
we need the distance from the top edge to the center of the lower rack stud, as well as the depth of the shelf. That would allow calculating the pull force on the rack studs.
Would be awesome to see how they'd work with full depth rails. the universal ones you have just put a piece of plywood and see how much they can take to see if a server could be mounted.
Was wondering what amount of weight those could hold, now that portion of my brain can be used for everything I need to know about fine dining!
This is not meant as a criticism it's just a pet peve when someone does this:
"This is not scientific"
Next sentence: I'm going to test something by experimenting measuring and documenting what happens.
That is the literal definition of scientific!
I would really say it's loose science because we didn't take the time to measure and calculate the actual force generated on each stud.
There is famous meme by Adam Savage saying that difference of doing science and just screwing around is writing it down. However, real science must follow scientific method. Just gathering data points and observations isn't science (yet). Whole point of science is to form a theory. In this case it would be about tensile strength of polymer. Physics about forces involved would need to understood as well to get any meaningful data point. The goal is to increase knowledge and understanding of how things actually work (ultimately getting into atom interactions). Then second step is to generalize this knowledge so that it can be applied to anything. Forming a theory about plastics (or rather polymer). So yes, it is totally accurate to say that this isn't scientific test. It really isn't. That said, it is practical test providing simple information about something where factors are fairly controlled. That is very useful and interesting even if we don't reach realm of science yet.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS (And @shadowmancer, @MikeQuinn) Please go watch the famous Richard Feynman one minute video on the scientific method. ua-cam.com/video/OL6-x0modwY/v-deo.html
In simple terms:
* Make a guess about the real world
* Calculate consequence(s) of your guess
* Go look at reality, and compare
* If it doesn't match, you're WRONG
That's it. Doesn't require degrees, fancy equipment, etc etc.
In this case, your guess was: we think Rack Studs hold plenty of weight. We think it will hold way more than 25 pounds. Your reality: it held over 80 lb. Comparison: yep, it worked!
It isn't "more scientific" or "good science" to measure to five digits, nor to calculate all the forces involved.
Now, I could make another guess or two:
* In an 8.0 earthquake, a heavy bit of equipment might cause a problem... but then you have other issues :)
* If there's significant temp swings, or pollution, perhaps the plastic degrades over time? (Hopefully the mfg knows :) )
--> (I do a lot of outdoor stuff. Turns out most zip tie material will NOT handle outdoor freeze-thaw temp swings very long...)
Who else jumped when that let loose? Couldn't help but cringe watching that shelf crash. This is a super helpful demonstration. Made me a believer.
This test only tested the tensile strength of the rack studs. The other element to test is the shear strength (straight down) as would be applicable if all four corners were used.
very nice! the only other weight test video is from the official Rackstuds channel and is kinda old.. thank you!
All new videos coming very soon. Eight in post as we speak!
@@Rackstuds that's very great to hear! I'll definitely use Rackstuds in the future, once I get a proper rack :)
I was someone who asked for this, so thank you a bunch! I honestly would have guessed maybe half of that, haha. Thankfully I don't have anything this heavy that I plan on trying to hold up with just studs, so I'm really happy knowing it's no issue.
Honestly, better than I anticipated.
Who Jumped?
All of us did
For science!
I might not use rack studs, but I have one of those shelves, and I feel a lot better about it now.
Only things that I can think that could weigh enough to even challenge those limits are UPS.
if i remember correct these 1side-held shelfs are meant to carry 10kg max, so more than enough
Been using Rackstudz for a while and always wanted to see what they failed at, not had anything get close to the limit but they are a really good product
Aren't there different colours in that pack? AIUI, the different colours have different ratings.
38kg is pretty good considering the rack studs are designed for max 20kg units.
what about weight much further from the studs - most network switches are very long and so provide much more levering stress rather than sheering.
Stress test? Nah, no need. 2020 has stress tested everything and everyone already :/
I like these, one problem I've found is with a lot of Chinese racks they don't fit, the square hole is a tad small.
Obviously in a real-world scenario, you wouldn't have shelves externally mounted like that and and certainly not loaded with any heavy equipment sticking out the front/rear of your rack.
If you were to mount heavy equipment like a rail-mounted server, UPS or have equipment sitting on a full-length shelf, you could always have the rack studs on the front and rear, or on the front only and have the regular cage nuts supporting the rear.
Personally, I prefer to have the rack studs to give a standard conformity to the look of my rack when viewing from the front rather than viewing a bunch of black or silver or mixture of both, bolts that can also have different sized heads based on what was supplied with the installed equipment.
The best thing I like about the rack studs is that as they are a perfect fit to the RU holes of a rack to ensure a consistent fit of mounted equipment, whereas the regular cage nuts have some level of play resulting in some equipment not sitting properly within its RU, likely forcing a readjustment of other equipment.
That was intense!
It looks like 80 lbs would have failed too, if left alone for a lunch break. Regardless, I'm having a hard time thinking of when I might want to ever put more than 20-30 lbs on a shelf like that under real world conditions (not a lot of bench weights in my racks) so they would be plenty strong for the things I normally use them for (a NAS or two, maybe some extra patch cables). I was thinking they would only be good for shelves across all four posts. This was good information, thank you.
How deep is the rack? Your putting more strain on the shelf because the weights are forward creating a moment. I have some UPS that come in at 100 lbs. They hold just fine with cage nuts.
The rack makes a difference as well. Some lower cost racks have a lot of flex. Panduit makes some really solid racks that don't flex or wobble. The side bracing helps a lot.
nothing to see here... just some dudes breaking some stuff for science
Now i want to see normal weight for some time and see how much time till they snap. At my work we have stuff on cage nuts mounted for easily more than 10 years.
I bet it would hold more weight if it was supported with the rack nuts on all 4 corners (front and rear)
Correct. We have a video on that coming soon
Rumor says purple are stronger ;)
purple are for thicker rails/frames
Nope, just fit thicker rails.
What's the point of Rackstuds? Why not just use regular cage nuts?
38kg.... that is pretty damn impressive actually...
Might have to give studs a go after all
Great video but I already ordered mine a few days ago. :) Bet it can hold even more weight when all four corners of a rack shelf are supported!
You are correct, a lot more
@@Rackstuds great! Have you maybe some of your own testing as reference/benchmark? Thanks 👍
That was pretty impressive for the rack studs! How much weight are the rack studs officially rated for?
Depends on which metric you look at. www.rackstuds.com/certification
44lbs/20kg
I've never heard of these, why use these over cage nuts? Hell, i still have to deal with threaded hole racks for a lot of my stuff. :( Square hole racks and cage nuts are what i aim for when i'm allowed to replace a rack.
Remember that it will fail at a lot lower weight if you leave it for long enouth.
Nerds living on the edge, I like it ! :D
I have those, they are really cool.. the company should earn the Nobel Prize for this. :)
Why thank you.
Nice work
My conclusion is I can use these for my 2U mATX servers. Thanks!
How can I be safe while bench pressing?
No plastic studs for me. I will pass based on people's experience with them overtime.
What about a 4 post shelf? Something like amzn.to/36xpBtN ? Prolly a bit much for another video, but I'd imagine it'd be much higher. I'm using one of these to support a Netapp DS4486 using standard racknuts and I can tell you that chassis + halfway populated with drives is super heavy.
See, that's what I was thinking. Not even a shelf, but a properly mounted server tied to all 4 posts. I think these plastic deals would be fine.
I'd pay a few bucks extra to get the same design in metal. Then I wouldn't have to dent my fingers trying to get clip nut prongs clipped in.
When I first saw Rackstuds, yes I thought they were 'cool', but no, there's no way I would trust my thousands of dollars of equipment with these. Yes, the servers would be evenly distributed front to rear by the server rails screwed to the front and rear rack rails, but switches and NVRs are only screwed to the front rack rails. I cringe when I think of trusting my fully populated Cisco 4510R+E chassis switch to these nylon/plastic studs. Nothing like trusting a 5 figure $ switch to $50 plastic studs. While no, my equipment will not be mounted the way it was in the video, and yes it held quite a bit of weight, I'll continue to use metal rack studs and screws, and therefore will never have to tell the Superintendents that $100,000 work of equipment just took a dive because I wanted to try mounting them with plastic screws.
I was afraid you were going to do some kind of workout.
Now leave the weight for months. i.e. 60lbs over months might not make it either.
Nice what about Normal regular cage nuts ?
They show up to 105 lbs in the video, but they did not hit the failure point in regular nuts.
The studs wont fit into the rails for my servers but I will get them for my switch and patch Panel :)
you probably have a rack with thicker rails. The purple rack studs are made for these racks.
I think over time, the plastic will wear and tear. I'd rather still use the pain in the ass metal nuts.
Is this a 2U or 4U shelf? I think it would make a difference.
Looks like a 2U shelf. See from 5:00.
2U
Yes it would. There would be less leverage force with a 4RU shelf but we still recommend mounting a shelf front and rear if you can
85 lbs = 38.5554 kg
This is what i thought. Standart cage nuts are simply the best. I don't believe in plastic in these things.
Metal alternative I've been wanting to check out. www.synergymicrosolutions.com/product/dev-mount-50-pack/
Interesting
the test is flawed , because you are testing outside the rack and the pressures are different when you test the way the shelf would be placed.
Incorrect, you can see in the video we also reversed the Rackstuds.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Sorry I was wrong I missed that part.