Laptop Arm Stand

2024-04-22 16:51 - Making

My laptop computer, on the fold out table in the sofa.

For a bit over a year, I've had my laptop sitting on this fold out table built into the middle seat of my sofa. It's okay, but it's not great. It's a bit too far to the side and too far back to make usage really comfortable and practical. For a while I've thought about mounting an arm that would hold the laptop in a more adjustable and flexible place. I finally did something about it, with the commercial arm arriving just yesterday. With it in hand I saw exactly how it worked and what size it is, so this morning I started drafting plans for how to mount it. Something made of wood, attached to and/or wedged under the structure of the sofa. I simplified through a few revisions.

The wooden stand I designed and built to hold my laptop arm.

This is what I came up with. It's an L shape, with the arm mounted to the top of the vertical leg, and the horizontal leg fitting under the front of the sofa. The horizontal leg prevents side-to-side tipping by pressing against either the floor or the sofa. A triangular brace makes that reliably strong, and a second prevents the vertical leg from tipping away from the sofa. The L part was designed somewhat carefully, while the rest was just made to fit. Everything was material already available in the basement. A C clamp is hidden by the triangular brace, holding the horizontal leg of the L to the sofa's metal frame.

The laptop now resting on a flexible arm, letting me position it just where I like.

And here it is. I can pull the laptop almost down into my lap and push it further away from me, with very little effort. I've got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for.

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