Transform a Clothing Rack into a Portable Whiteboard

If your ambitious ideas are too voluminous for a single whiteboard, these DIY z-rack boards might be just the solution. When the Design That Matters studio found themselves drowning in sticky notes, they knew that they somehow needed to whip up some new wall space for their office. When they discovered a design for portable nesting white boards in Make Space by Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft, they decided to give it a try.

The below video gives a quick overview of how easy it is to make your own. All you’ll need is a garment rack, zipties, showerboard, some clamps, and a drill. Next, the Design That Matters folks used their Makerbot to add some crucial 3D printed customizations — snap-on marker holders, hooks for layering on additional posterboards, and clips to fasten an Ikea caddy to the pole.

These z-racks not only increase your whiteboard space, but as Design That Matters explains, “the wheels meant we could park them anywhere in the studio, and the bases nest together to reduce clutter. Building them ourselves saved money, which is great because we’re a cheapskate nonprofit and we wanted ten of them.” Additionally, these boards make great room dividers in places like makerspaces or classrooms where more permanent partitions wouldn’t make sense.

Design That Matters has posted a walkthrough on Instructables as well as the STL files for their customized parts on Thingiverse.