Universal rack for housing telecommunication equipment

Claim 1

In a universal rack for housing a wide range of subrack modules containing telecommunication equipment, power supplies and exchange cables, said rack comprising a vertical upright including connectors affixed thereto and at least two brackets, each bracket having a horizontal suspension base for the subrack modules and opposing side ribs each provided with notches for engagement with corresponding pins of the upright, the improvement comprising: (a) said upright being U-shaped and including a base and two opposing sides extending normal thereto, with the free end of each side including a series of inwardly protruding pins regularly spaced a distance DI apart; (b) each said bracket rib including, at the end engagable with said corresponding side free end, a vertical strip including an array of N holes in a lower portion thereof, and a slit thereabove, the diameter of said holes and said slit slightly exceeding the diameter of said pins and the number of holes N and the distance PBU between each of said holes being such that DI=PBU(N+1) while the distance H between topmost and the bottommost positions in the slit is H=DI(1-2/N+1); whereby each bracket can assume, over the distance DI, NP positions where NP=DI/N, and the number NM of subrack modules mountable between consecutive brackets are all those resulting from the combinations of the DI/N positions of each bracket on opposing side arms with respect to the successive ones.