On today's Maker Mashup, we're talking about this incredibly versatile hunk of metal.
Welcome Makers. Today we're gonna talk about this hunk of metal right here.
If you haven't seen one of these before, it is a DIN rail. And I have to admit, I'm a little late
to the party on this one. I have seen these in electronic enclosures for phone wiring,
network junctions and electrical boxes for years and honestly, I never gave them much thought
until recently when I ran across a 3D print for a Raspberry Pi that hooked right up to one of these.
So I did some searches and I found that there are a ton of 3D models for DIN rails. And after
the last couple of weeks, I think DIN rails and 3D printers are really a perfect match
for each other. Now, if you're a maker like me, you tinker with all sorts of stuff, electronics
being one of them. And if you've ever used a bread board or worked on electronics projects,
your desk probably looks something like this. You have your bread board and jumper wires everywhere
and a project that is impossible to move around. So your desk accumulates more
parts until you finish the project or give up and throw the whole thing into a box.
So today we're gonna be working to put an end to all of that. I'm gonna show you how you can use
one of these things for all sorts of maker projects and how you can use this one little part
here to simply attach nearly anything to these DIN rails. So with all that said, let's get to work.
Believe it or not, the DIN rail has been a standard since the 1950s. The original concept was
developed and implemented in Germany back in 1928. And that later became the standard we have today.
35 millimeter rails, just like this one, are the ones that we're gonna be using today, and is the
most popular din size. These come in various lengths and are usually made of steel aluminum.
And I've got an aluminum one right here that I've been using for these projects you see here.
In links or down in the description where you can purchase these from Amazon
or the Layer Fuse website, all of which helps support the channel.
I'll also include links to all the models that we're gonna be using here today.
So let's start about how you can mount these DIN rails. The easiest way of course is to
simply screw them directly onto something. And this is where I've seen it used a lot inside of
enclosures. You just take a screw and attach this directly to just about anything. If you've been
watching my channel for some time, you know I have had a bunch of test leads right behind me here. I
was able to replace that pegboard rack that I had before with one of these DIN rails and it holds
a lot better. These can also be screwed to the back of a desk. And you can use clips like these
to wire things behind your desk and really clean up that mess that always seems to be everywhere.
Now, if you need more space for wiring behind the rail, you can also use these type of clips here,
which actually raise it up from the back. And it gives you more clearance for wires and the
attachments themselves. This works great if you wanna mount something to a wall. Or,
you can even mount these directly to a 3D printer. The M3 screws fit right through here with T-nuts.
Now, the first time I saw it on a 3D printer was by Steve in our Discord Channel.
He actually used these with terminal- screw terminals to make his X301 build easier on
the electronic side of things. And now the X301 comes with a terminal block inside.
So really picked up a lot of good tips just from seeing other makers use DIN rails.
Now by attaching these to your 3D printer, you could easily mount a Raspberry Pi for
OctoPrint or Clipper. And you could use a small rail for mounting things like buck converters
for a Noctua fan to mount directly to extrusion.
So let's talk about my favorite use of DIN rails so far and that is electronics projects. Now
for something smaller, you might wanna use something just like this. It has some feet
that simply attach to the rail and you can put something like an Arduino and a bread board on it,
and you can move this around easily. So it's easy to pick up and move everywhere.
But when you wanna move up to something bigger, you can go with something like this. Now this
raises everything up above the desk so that way you would be able to put a power supply or work,
and you could have your electronics project here.
And you can hold a display or something else. So it's great for freeing up space on your workbench.
Now if you still need more room, you can upgrade to something like this bad boy right here.
This has three rails on it. And along with the three rails, you can see that I've attached an
SKR mainboard. I have the [inaudible] display, a power supply steppers, some alligator clips.
And what I have done with this is really created a complete 3D printer test bench. And this pen- test
bench has marlin on it and I can test things like firmware, hot ends, heat beds, you name it. And a
complete motion control system if I wanna plug it in here. And I can wire everything without having
to modify an existing printer. So it's a good way to test certain components out or use this for
a prototype project. And I can move this between motion control systems and really test things out.
But the thing that I love about it is it's super portable. There's a handle to it.
And I've been really wanting to put one of these together for some time.
And I've made all of the models available down in the description.
It's all open source, so you can do whatever you want with this project.
Now most of the models that you see here
on the stand I made myself. I didn't make the stand, but all the other models that are on here.
And I did it all with mostly this bracket here. And I'm gonna show you how you can
use this bracket. Uh, you can buy these online. They're extremely similar to this.
The difference is, this one's a little more heavy duty so I could attach larger things to
it. But I'm gonna show you how to make your own mounts quickly and easily using this bracket.
I'm gonna be using Fusion 360 but this process can be done in Tinkercad just as easily. And for
our example, we're gonna be creating a simple mount for a NEMA 17 stepper for my test bench.
I wanted to be able to make this process as simple as possible and be able to swap out steppers
quickly. So we're gonna take a 43 by 43 millimeter square, which is slightly larger than a stepper
and I'm gonna add three holes. One in the center and two of them 12.5 millimeters apart from the
center. And then I'm gonna make some larger circles so I can add a recess for the screws.
Then we'll add an offset to the outside and extrude the base up 3 millimeters
and the sides of 15 millimeters, leaving three holes in the center.
I also want to recess the screws so it gives a little bit more of a finished look. The key here
is really the hole spacing that meets up with the mounting bracket. And this is really the key to
making your own attachments easily. You can just print this bracket and then use some M3 screws
to attach your particular bracket to the bracket that attaches to the rail.
Then the bracket just snaps right into the rail here and our stepper fits right inside. I
created things like this display mount by measuring the distance of the holes
and then creating a long rectangle to mount the bracket.
So with very little effort, you can attach just about anything to DIN rails.
So if electronic projects weren't enough to want to use DIN rails,
I ran across this really cool project as well. And this is a linear motion system. So if you wanted
to create a 3D printer and use a DIN rail, you could attach a DIN rail or another project and
have a linear motion system. This certainly is no replacement for a full scale linear rail,
but it's really inexpensive and you can make a lot of projects with this without having to buy
a really long DIN rail. And this is just a 3D printed part and these bearings
popped right on. So it was a very easy project to put together and really illustrates the
power of DIN rails. And I have links to all of these models down in the description.
So as you could see, you can really use these things for just about anything. And I'm really
looking forward to finding new ways to use them. Certainly, 3D printing helps being able to
mount just about anything universally with these DIN rails. But I can see them being used for
inside a robot, a 3D printer, or any other electronics hobby project. And I'm going
to install some of these behind my desk and workbench here to help with routing wires and
cables and really cleaning up the way that the wires are handled on my workbench here.
Now I'm really interested in hearing if you're already using these. As I said, I was a bit
late to finding out how useful DIN rails were. But if you're using them for something unique,
let me know down in the comments. I would love to hear about your projects on this.
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