Keeping Your Racks Organized

Using Lacing Bars
This week we want to tell you about a few tips we use on building and organizing racks of equipment. One of the major techniques we use are lacing bars. Lacing Bars are simply horizontal bars to guide cabling. We have all seen a rack similar to the one on the right...-->

These are messy and can make a simple move or change a complicated process. Lacing bars are used to avoid this problem, clean up your system, and give it a professional look.

Lacing bars are attached at the rear of an equipment rack to the rear rails. They look like horizontal bars with small holes in them. They can be used several different ways. One example is how we installed them recently at The Center for Creative Leadership. The system we built was designed as a “set it and forget it” system.
We built the racks with the idea that, ideally, there would rarely be a need to change, or rearrange cables. As you can see in the picture below, everything is measured right to length and there is no tolerance for a cable to be moved somewhere else. If something gets unplugged it will be easy to see where it goes, and just as easy to reach in and check equipment or a connection.Now you may be thinking, “my system is more fluid, and cords move around all the time, can I still use lacing bars?”

Yes!
You can still use lacing bars for organization, you will just need to plan ahead for your particular system and lace appropriately. For a more permanent system we use zip-ties to keep cords in place. For a system that is more fluid, you may consider Velcro instead. Also, if you have cables that are moving around often, just give them enough slack to reach every plug they might need to reach.
Even just lacing the power for the units in the rack can make your life so much easier when you go to connect all your signal cables. Even on cables that are temporarily plugged into a rack, simple lacing can keep them from getting pulled out accidentally.
Lacing Bars are a simple, easy way to keep your system organized and well maintained. We hope you'll want to give them a try too!