PhillyRack

Recently I’ve been working on a project at school with a couple of other people creating an open source modular bike rack system.  The end product of our research and development is the PhillyRack.  We wanted to keep the materials and hardware minimal and easy to find, so we decided to use plywood and L-brackets to construct the final prototype.  Plywood and bikes may not seem like a likely choice for building materials but it proves to be light and strong.  We also want to say something about bikes and their eco-friendliness, Philadelphia isn’t the cleanest or environmentally conscious city, but it easily could be.  If enough people realize that taking their bikes to work and or to run errands is easy and fun then the fact that they are not using oil is an after thought. Since plywood is cheap hopefully people will experiment with rack setups and ultimately customize one that fits their needs.  The use of L-brackets was intentional so people could setup multiple configurations with the same hardware, the plans also call for bolts that are the same size so one could reuse hardware if their setup changes.  The plans for building a rack are straight forward and easy to execute, anyone with hand tools can make one and come out with a quality bike rack.  On the other hand if one is more fortunate and experienced we provide CNC files to those who may want a more trick rack.

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