- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
- Messages
- 6,464
Recently got a new 32" monitor (great for viewing HM!) and its a little too close for these eyes to focus on comfortably. The monitor stand is on a desk with a hutch and hits the back rail, forcing the screen surface to be 7" from the backwall of the hutch. I'd like to improve that a bit and reduce that offset. To minimize the amount of design on my part, I opted to buy a cheap VESA monitor holder with about a 1.75" rear offset. It's listed on Amazon "Mount-It" for about $18. I figured it would be a good start to the project. This holder is designed to be mounted into a stud, not the back of a hutch. The back of the hutch is covered in cork and you can pin things up on it.
My original idea was to have a 21.5" x 4" x 3/8" bar mounted to the back of the hutch, held by screws coming into the back, perhaps with some fender washers to spread the load. I'd drill and tap holes for the Mount-It holder into the bar. I designed up something in FreeCAD and made a print. Had a chance (random) thought, and wanted to check the thickness of the back. Thought it would be good to see if the hutch was actually suitable for my idea. A quick estimate of the thickness revealed to me, the distance is a lot thicker than expected, and it appears to be either hollow, flimsy or both. That put a damper on this design.
So next idea was to extend the bar length, so that the bar would be held instead by the 2" wide cross bars on top and bottom off the bulletin board area. That would make the bar 25.5" long. I'd make some through holes at the top and bottom, clamp the bar, and drill some pilot holes through the wood. The idea would be to use wood screws to fasten the bar to the hutch. To be honest with you, I'm not keen about drilling holes in relatively decent furniture.
Another possibility might be to make my own base, say out of thick steel, and fasten a shorter upright bar. Now that I think about it more, I should have done this in the first place. The pieces will be significantly smaller, and I will be able to mill them without too many strange operations, due to my shorter mill table travel length. At the moment, I only have 5" travel in one direction and about 9" in the other, due to the mills close proximity to my lathe.
I had gotten sidetracked this morning, because I thought I had to rearrange my shop to do this job. So I emptied a cabinet, moved it and filled it up again. This was so I could move my mill about 8-9" to get more table travel. My current setup (with x power feed) would run into my lathe after only 5" travel. I have everything ready to move the mill over. Still going to do it, since this has been annoying me ever since I had installed the power feed. So that's my next task. Then back to the monitor stand...
Threads useless without pictures, so this is what I am thinking of for the base. Probably will pretty it up a little and chamfer the top edges of the base. Not sure about the back bar. According to my bathroom scale the base weighs 11 lbs. Should be ok.
My original idea was to have a 21.5" x 4" x 3/8" bar mounted to the back of the hutch, held by screws coming into the back, perhaps with some fender washers to spread the load. I'd drill and tap holes for the Mount-It holder into the bar. I designed up something in FreeCAD and made a print. Had a chance (random) thought, and wanted to check the thickness of the back. Thought it would be good to see if the hutch was actually suitable for my idea. A quick estimate of the thickness revealed to me, the distance is a lot thicker than expected, and it appears to be either hollow, flimsy or both. That put a damper on this design.
So next idea was to extend the bar length, so that the bar would be held instead by the 2" wide cross bars on top and bottom off the bulletin board area. That would make the bar 25.5" long. I'd make some through holes at the top and bottom, clamp the bar, and drill some pilot holes through the wood. The idea would be to use wood screws to fasten the bar to the hutch. To be honest with you, I'm not keen about drilling holes in relatively decent furniture.
Another possibility might be to make my own base, say out of thick steel, and fasten a shorter upright bar. Now that I think about it more, I should have done this in the first place. The pieces will be significantly smaller, and I will be able to mill them without too many strange operations, due to my shorter mill table travel length. At the moment, I only have 5" travel in one direction and about 9" in the other, due to the mills close proximity to my lathe.
I had gotten sidetracked this morning, because I thought I had to rearrange my shop to do this job. So I emptied a cabinet, moved it and filled it up again. This was so I could move my mill about 8-9" to get more table travel. My current setup (with x power feed) would run into my lathe after only 5" travel. I have everything ready to move the mill over. Still going to do it, since this has been annoying me ever since I had installed the power feed. So that's my next task. Then back to the monitor stand...
Threads useless without pictures, so this is what I am thinking of for the base. Probably will pretty it up a little and chamfer the top edges of the base. Not sure about the back bar. According to my bathroom scale the base weighs 11 lbs. Should be ok.
