give me some ideas

Looking to try a new rack design but I have hit a mental wall on what to use for shelves.

Rack itself is a 3 wall design

I want to find lightweight material that hopefully is vented, strong, will not rot and hopefully cheap.

Since this would be a lidless design I thought about the plastic "egg grate" material used in many incubators. Not sure if it is strong enough or smooth enough to avoid injury to the animal.

any ideas?

That's hard to say. The XPVC seems to be the popular choice these days. I looked on SSScales website for his economy racks and they seem to be the best option in my opinion.

http://ssscales.com/archives/290

This design also looks good to me. It is kind of like a rat rack with freedom breeder style heat. Its something to consider.

http://www.baileyreptiles.com/cb70rack.html

There are a lot of options.