# Custom Chassis & Card Cages

https://kdisplay.com/products/chassis-cabinets/chassis-card-cages

K-Display, a Chicago sheet metal fabricator, builds chassis, subracks, and card cages from customer drawings, with card guides, backplane rails, standoffs, and gasket lands in laser cut and formed sheet. They ship as loose panels, a joined chassis, or an assembly with hardware and guides fitted, ready for boards.

## Overview
We build chassis, subracks, and card cages with card guides, backplane rails, standoffs, and gasket lands fitted. Parts are cut and formed from stainless steel, aluminum, carbon steel, galvanized steel, or galvanneal, with spot welds in steel and frame welds in aluminum, carbon steel, or stainless steel, then powder coated. They leave the dock as loose panels, a joined chassis, or an assembly with hardware, guides, and covers fitted, ready for boards. Chassis that mount in a rack on ears or slides are built as rack-mount enclosures.

## Process
- Cut the panels: We cut the flat panels with their guide slots, hardware holes, and vents by laser or CNC punching.
- Press, form, and join: We press in standoffs and nuts, form the flanges, then spot weld steel rails and panels or fasten them.
- Mask, coat, and assemble: We mask ground pads and gasket lands, powder coat, and fit guides and covers last.

## Typical parts
- Equipment chassis: Formed bases, side panels, and covers joined into a chassis, with connector cutouts, vents, gasket lands, and mounting features.
- Card cages and subracks: Frames with card guide slots or purchased guides, front and rear rails, and backplane mounting at the board pitch.
- Backplane and module rails: Rails, brackets, and tie bars that hold the backplane, modules, and power supply.
- Front panels and brackets: Panels for card fronts and bracket sets for fans, drives, and power supplies.

## Design considerations
- Board pitch and parallelism: A card binds when the pitch drifts across the cage or the guide slots are out of parallel, and rail flatness decides whether it seats squarely in the backplane connector. Positions follow the board pitch or subrack standard you name.
- Guide type: Formed slots take their position from the flat pattern and the bends, while purchased guides take it from where they fasten to the rails. A slot or hole placed for the wrong guide type leaves the card riding off its path.
- Standoffs and hardware: Self-clinching hardware seats by sheet material, hardness, thickness, and distance from edges and bends, and a fastener too near a bend does not seat. We place each one from the hardware maker's edge distance before the flat pattern is cut.
- Gasket lands and bonded seams: Gasket lands, bonded seams, and conductive faces pass current across a joint only while they stay flat and bare, and powder coat over a land or ground pad stops that current.

## Related pages
- [Sheet Metal Forming & Bending](https://kdisplay.com/capabilities/cutting-forming/forming)
- [Resistance Spot Welding](https://kdisplay.com/capabilities/welding/resistance-spot-welding)
- [Hardware Installation](https://kdisplay.com/capabilities/finishing/hardware-installation)
- [Powder Coating](https://kdisplay.com/capabilities/finishing/powder-coating)
- [Electrical Enclosures](https://kdisplay.com/products/electrical-enclosures)