My old laptop support was starting to annoy me on so many levels. For one it was big and bulky. Not something you'd want to lug around from lan to lan. Furthermore, it prevented me from accessing the wlan and bluetooth buttons and the memory card reader at the front of my Acer Ferrari 3400. So I introduced the faulty piece of aluminum to Mr. Hammer: After my bloodthirst was satiated, I hopped to work with Solidworks. The new design was to be much sturdier than the old one. I also wanted the design to be foldable for easy transport. The whole thing also needed to fit onto my 40cm wide sidetable with my Natural Ergonomic 4000 - keyboard. Rectangular alu tubing for the triangular legs and screwrods for the crossbeams seemed to offer enough support. The joints could be easily bended. As a bonus the whole thing would be quite easy to build. I quickly rushed to the nearest supermarket - namely to Finland's biggest Prisma - and bought a length of 10mm tubing, M6 screwrod and M6 nuts. With my nuts tightly clenched in my fists I began sawing the tubing and drilling 3mm holes where the screwrods would go. "Why 3mm?", you might ask. Mainly because my puny dremel cannot hold a drillbit larger than 3mm. So first I had to drill the holes, next I used a countersunking hand-tool to chamfer the edges of the holes to 6mm and finally I used a punch and a hammer to break the holes in. The punched-in holes turned out to be tight enough for the screwrods to bite into them. So now if I want to take the square tubes off I have rotate them for several turns. Instead of the intended angled slots to support the tubes at the back, I simply threaded some holes and inserted screws. This way I can easily adjust the angle of the support. If I want to have a new angle I can easily insert more screws. The laptop stays in place with two small pieces of anle alu riveted to the tubes. The laptop is also padded by several silicone self-adhesive pads. The support itself doesn't scratch the table because I inserted furniture cushion - stickers at the bottom. The only real downside to the construction are the screwrods. If I rotate the tubes around the rods, depending on the direction, the nuts either tighten or turn loose. So I have to re-adjust them before and after rotating. That is a minor unconvenience, though. I only need to fold the support occasionally. I was originally a bit concerned with the balance of this support but as you can see it's standing up alright. The support itself weights only 168g but with the laptop it adds up to 3kg. Even though a piece of it is protruding over the table it is still as solid as a rock. All in all I'm very pleased with the results of this little mod. I'm planning on working more with aluminum in the future. If anyone has any comments, questions or suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. Thanks for reading!
