How To Figure Out What Size Cage Nuts I Need

As Adam Osborne once famously said, "The nice affair about standards is that there are and then many of them," and so information technology is with the nuts and bolts we use in the data centre. Cage nuts come tapped for four dissimilar sizes of bolts: The English 10-32 and 12-24 and the metric M5 and M6. While 10-32 and M5 are close enough that you might be able to force an M5 bolt into a ten-32 nut, the others merely won't fit.

My first recommendation to you, dearest reader, is to standardize your data center on 1 and only i size commodities and cage nut. Like most of us, you'll accumulate some muzzle nuts and bolts in the data center; many vendors provide several sizes with their equipment. Resist the temptation to save a few dollars by saving them all and using whatever's handy. Cage nuts and bolts are cheap enough ($thirty/100 for cage nuts at Amazon.com) that ownership a standard size is cheaper than the fourth dimension and aggravation of hunting for an M5 screw in a java tin of mixed screws.

If your network closets accept two-post racks tapped 10-32, yous should do the same. Similarly, if your network guys bought 12-24 racks, you should use that size and live with their gloating. If you made the mistake of buying 2-post racks without specifying the threads, and you have racks with both 12-24 and 10-32 or mixed English and metric, the all-time you lot can do is label the racks and the containers where you keep your bolts to reduce confusion.

DeepStorage labs is standardized on 10-32 for several reasons. Though we don't have any 2-mail racks, we do have a Star Case rack that'due south tapped on the sides ten-32, and since I spent years working with AV gear and racks tapped for ten-32, it just feels correct to me.

Choosing bolts
One reward of using ten-32 or 12-24 English threading is that, in a pinch, I can run downwardly to the local hardware store or Home Depot and choice upward extra bolts. Readers exterior the US should standardize on M5 or M6 hardware for the aforementioned reason.

You tin can use any onetime 10-32 bolt to hold your gear in the rack, but they're non however. When you're belongings a network switch or patch console over your head with one paw and bolting it in with the other, little things affair. Large heads are less likely to slip through the slots on rack mountain ears and have more surface expanse to spread the forcefulness over that thin sheet metal. The most common screws at the big box stores accept round heads, but the best screws for apply in the data heart take the larger pan head.

Cage basics are loosely mounted in their spring clips to prevent small-scale alignment mismatches from jamming up the works. Though this is generally a good thing, information technology makes it easier to cross thread a bolt into the cage nut.

Domestic dog-point bolts (spiral particular pictured right) that have a curt unthreaded section at the tip make information technology easier to find the muzzle nut and start the threads when yous're working in blind or awkward positions like u1 at the lesser or u42 at the top.

The perfect rack screw, like the one pictured to the left, has a large caput and the dog point to get in easier to insert and, more importantly, to prevent cross treading that can harm the screw or the nut. Plastic washers preclude the screws from scratching your equipment; I've never cared almost scratches on my rack mounting ears, then I leave them off.

Of class, having made my conclusion years ago to stick to 10-32, the cabinets our friends at CommScope were so kind equally to provide for the new lab each came with 100 M6 cage nuts and bolts. They'll soon be listed on eBay.

Next folio: Installing cage basics

How To Figure Out What Size Cage Nuts I Need,

Source: https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/cage-nuts-ultimate-guide/page/0/1

Posted by: fortnergodis1939.blogspot.com

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