Designing my Desktop Monitor Lift

I needed to lift my monitor up on my desk to be slightly higher while at the same time providing me with a keyboard storage option. I have some 5 mm plywood in the CNCROi.com shop so I’ll use that to make this project. It’s fun getting back to designing as I haven’t designed anything new in over 6 months for CNCKing.com!

I’ll make my monitor fit within a 48 cm wide and 5 cm high envelope. Although I can just as easily make this project with my CNC router, I want to add lots of little details so that it must be made with my Austrian Trotec Speedy 400 flexx CNC laser. They keyboard is 45 cm long and 2.75 cm high so I need to give myself enough material to hold the monitor without bending down… hencey plywood over hardboard or MDF.

I was originally going to make this stand to look like two eggs holding-up a board but find more usefulness coming out of designing it to use those spaces to hold a ruller and pencils.

I’ve now unified all my meshes together and I’ve measured my monitor base to be 20 cm in depth which is just slightly deeper than my keyboard of 16.5 cm. I’m now going to add guides on both sides to create a bit more strength but more importantly, ensure that things stay aligned while everything glues.

I can now proceed two different ways, the easiest would be to simply replicate this half centimeter thick surface I’ve just created 40 times to make this project but to be frank, it’s a waste of material and I don’t need something that strong so I want to make it in “parts”.

I need to change the orientation of my supports to be horizontal instead of vertical so that I can make a base that covers all the way through with the cross members slotting into it. I then need to create the same along the top to have my enclosed top and bottom monitor support.

This is starting to look like a finished model, time to bring in the supports on the inside of the eggs so there is a bit more distance and create the flat pieces. I also want to widen the supports on both sides to be half the width of the large one in the middle for symmetry.

I really like how the design came together, the top and bottom “lock in” the supports across the whole model – it’s a similar build but far simpler than my other model, the electronics award. Next step is the cutting of this model using my Austrian Trotec Speedy 400 flexx and then putting it together, due to it’s speed, it will be quicker for me to cut and build this model than to design it in the first place!