Shoe Rack Shelf Stabilizer Bracket

thingiverse

Threatened by the looming specter of destruction from a falling shoe rack, I devised a plan to secure the thing firmly to the wall for stability's sake. The manufacturers claim that their racks can hold hundreds of pairs of shoes, so preventing them from toppling over would be a wise decision indeed. Thus, my design features a swinging arm that descends to clip onto the shelf rods, thereby keeping the shelves steady against the wall. The design is tailored for print-in-place with 0.5 mm clearance. I discovered that it breaks free pretty easily, requiring no supports whatsoever. If I were to reprint these, I would shorten the width of the swinging arm...the length of the hinge pin...and increase the infill density. Due to the print orientation, I don't think the width added much to stability and the ultimate strength is determined by the lamination strength of the layers of the hinge pin, especially where it attaches to the swing arm. Hopefully, if you want to reprint and agree with the changes, the OpenSCAD file will make it easy for you. A subsequent note: I installed the brackets and despite handling them with kid gloves, the hinge pins on two of them snapped easily. So I drilled out the pivot 1/4 inch and hot melt glued a 1/4 inch dowel core into place to rescue the parts. So there's your spoiler alert right there. I would modify the hinge pin/arm piece to have a hole that accepts a rigid core like the dowel or a nail or similar. Update: I added a hole in the hinge pin to accept a glue-in-place 4d or 5d common nail (just clip off a quarter inch from the 5d) to provide this part with reinforcement against cracking along build layer lines. Consider boosting the infill density from 15% to 20% or 30%, too. I originally envisioned using four brackets, one in each corner of the rack to the wall. However, I only have two in place...at the top corners...and it's working just fine so far. Yes, I could give the bottom a good boot (ha ha ha) and the rack would likely move but I have 40 pairs shelved and it doesn't seem to want to fall over yet. I'm letting my Imelda Marcos side come out (just the shoes, not the corrupt part).