Cable Management for Desktop Shelves

Cable management trays
added to back of desktop
selves.

Now that my station desktop is on wheels and has a set of nice shelves, I wondered might be done about the rats nest of wires hanging down from the back of the desk. Some kind of cable management system was needed.

These systems can be expensive. I found a solution on Amazon.com that worked pretty well. It is a kit of eight cable raceway trays about 15" long, 1.5" wide and just under 1" tall. All for just about $20.

These worked well with my desktop shelves. Three cable trays fit neatly on the back of the shelves just under the copper pipe ground bus bar. I mounted them using three short wood screws on each tray.

The tops of the trays either slide or snap off. The fingers on the sides are easily displaced to insert wires of just about any size. In some cases, cables are routed in the trays from one end of the shelves to the other.

From the picture, there are still a lot of wires, but it is neater and more manageable than before. Many of those are antenna coax or power connections. The antenna coax will be moving to the back wall of the basement once the Single-Point Ground (SPG) panel is in place. 

I also improved the bonding between units. I'm using 1/2" tinned copper braid, a fork lug and a cable clamp around the 1/2" copper tube grounding bus. This creates a low-impedance connection between the equipment and the station ground. In a few cases, I had to drill a hole and add some #6 screws and nuts to make the connection.

The best part is, I still have five left-over cable management trays to use elsewhere.