I am just finishing an exercise in cramming a lot of gear into a small space (bench area 4' x 7', room 10' x 7'). I'm using shelving on the double slotted standards with 2 & 3 tab brackets. In addition to the electronics bench, I have 5 computers, 3 monitors on articulated mounts, 2 UPSes and 2 printers. It's "cozy" ;-) Hand tools and soldering gear are mounted on articulated monitor mounts with the soldering station controllers on a lazy susan.
I only went 8" high mainly so I can pull an instrument without having to disturb more than one other instrument. The shelves are about 20" deep. I currently have HP 34401A size instruments stacked, but I found that if I shove a 2 prong Pomona banana plug to BNC adaptor into a 34401A, the top one wants to slide around, so I'm likely to make sub shelves for each instrument using 1/2" or 3/4" EMT standoffs and 1/4" plywood with stop blocks glued to the plywood to keep things from moving when plugging stuff in. My radios, soldering gear and one scope are on 100% extension sliders so I can store them in the corners and easily pull them out for use.
At present I only have a dozen instruments active, but I quickly ran into a problem using regular IEC cords and power strips because of the volume of cables. To resolve that I made a power cable out of 1/2" EMT and handy boxes with each handy box feeding 4 instruments. It took a couple of iterations to get it right.
If stud locations in the wall are an issue, *bolt* the shelf standards to a piece of 3/4" plywood at convenient spacing and then screw the plywood to the studs.
My instrument stack is only about 27" high, but that's because I have almost 600 parts bins lined up two deep above them. The front row will be on rails and carriages so I can slide the front row to one side to access the rear row.
The backs of the benchtop instruments rest on the lowest shelf so the faces of the instruments are inclined at a comfortable viewing angle.
The setup is still not complete, but it's getting there. Probes and cables are in Pomona racks on the wall behind the door which opens inward. I'm going to add a second set of racks to the back of the door.
The only downside I see to this is I've spent most of a month figuring out what to put where. And it's hard or impossible to reach things on the top shelf without a stool even though I'm 6' 2" because the bench is really in front of the shelves.
Reg
