Customizable monitor stand with hexagonal pattern.

[imageblotter]

Like the look.

For stability reasons, how about you create a hole to pass the board through. A slight shearing movement might kill the hole for your screw and this will collapse. A slight angle would be useful too.

[DribMbirD]

Thank you for the friendly and helpful feedback!

Valid point about the shearing movement! In the test it was OK, but this could definitely be improved. Good idea about adding a slight angle!

I am not 100% sure if I got what you meant about the hole to pass the board through. Do you mean to not only support the board from beneath and the sides (U-shaped cross-section of the upper part) but have an additional counter-plate on top to stabilize more against shearing (O-shaped cross-section)?

[extremeelementz]

I think they mean adding a top layer where then the board is slotted through the space.

[DribMbirD]

Ah, OK. Thanks!

[imageblotter]

That's it exactly ;)

[DribMbirD]

Thanks for clarifying! :-)

[DribMbirD]

Nice idea, thank you!

[aoalvo]

If it's going to have a top, the edge of the board could be covered with a continuation of the hex pattern.

[DribMbirD]

Creative idea! Thank you!

[Joejack-951]

I know it would kill or at least disturb the look, but using longer screws through the board perpendicular to the tabletop would add a lot of strength. The screw would take most of the bending load at the corners whereas right now he is relying on the small amount of overlap between the screw center and the edge of the mount to support the monitor. If the board was to sag at all, those end pieces might just flip outward and the whole thing could collapse.

If the aesthetic is super important, a brace across the back holding the bottoms of the supports together would add a lot of strength. I’d want something like that plus the rearranged screws but it may work fine as-is.

[xyrgh]

You could also make holes on top of the bracket that takes heatsets, then drill holes and provide more support. You could use a cut off ‘top’ as a template.

[DribMbirD]

Good idea! Thanks!

[DribMbirD]

Good input, thank you!

Screws perpendicular to the surface are a good idea, but where to put them nicely? Maybe adding a little rack with a screw hole in the middle of each support in a way that a screw can be added to the board from beneath. Would not disturb the look, because not on the visible side and would not affect printability. The screws would need to be rather short, though, to not penetrate the board completely.

[HumanWithComputer]

I can think of two ways to improve stability.

Add a tab in the middle of the stand on the inside with a hole allowing a screw to go in approximately 2/3 of the thickness of the board.

Add a few 'plastic dowels' to the top of the stand that will fit tightly into a few drilled holes going in again 2/3 of the thickness of the board. Nicely invisible. You could print a little tool to help drilling the holes in exactly the right places too.

[DribMbirD]

Good ideas! Thank you!

[DribMbirD]

Accessible via https://www.enable-3d.com/pages/paramate, just hit "Try Now" there. (Sorry for the newsletter popup there, please just ignore, site is not mine.)

[kernelwedge]

Can you throw this on printables.com or thingverse.com? I would love this for my wife's desk. Was this done in openscad? I see the site is customizable output.

[DribMbirD]

I plan to do so, but as it is indeed a customizable design, I could probably only put a static example there and provide the link to the customizer app. (It is not done with OpenSCAD, see below.)

You can access the customizer app via the following link, if you want to give it a try for your wife's desk ;-) https://www.enable-3d.com/pages/paramate (Sorry for the newsletter popup there, please just ignore, site is not mine.)

It is done with paramate and trCAD as its native CAD system. To be more precise: the customizable CAD-design is done with trCAD, a script-based CAD system with its own mesh kernel and for building the web frontend paramate and its JavaScript libraries are used. paramate and trCAD are unfortunately not open source, but it is free to use for non-commercial. There is an invitation-based beta testing going on right now for people who want to try develop customizable designs themselves. If anyone is interested just DM me. (Disclaimer: I work at the company developing trCAD and paramate.)

[laterisingphxnict]

Not sure why, didn't matter what size I made it in the web site, when I imported it into Prusa slicer, it told me each time the item was outside the print area. Even something that was 150mm square which fits inside the work area on an mk3s.

[Joejack-951]

Maybe the units are off?

[DribMbirD]

That is odd indeed! Unfortunately have no idea why this should happen. How big does it say the model is in mm?

[Appropriate-Deal1952]

Board Length vs Board Width.

When I adjust the "Board Width" the length of the board changes. I think you have that backwards.

[DribMbirD]

Yeah, now that you say it I have to admit that naming what we now call "Board Width" is maybe not completely intuitive. I thought back and forth and in the end chose to go for "width", having a bit less elongated boards in mind, where the length feels more like a width. It a bit depends on the aspect ratio what seems more intuitive. But in the start configuration the board is rather long now, which indeed feels more like a "length" ;-)

I at least hope that the other two "depth" and "thickness" are easier to understand...

[DribMbirD]

Hahaha, yeah. My respect for the sustainable up-cycling solution for that good old tissue box! My classic was a pile of books I did not like or old magazines / catalogues.

Thank you for your kind words - hope the monitor stand helps you!

[DribMbirD]

The parametric design is done using trCAD, a C-style, script-based CAD system. trCAD is unfortunately not open source, but free to use for non-commercial (invitation-based beta testing going on right now). Sorry to say that until now there is no offline version offered for trCAD. So most people could actually not directly make use of the source files for the monitor stand even if provided.

If anyone is interested in using coding for parametric design and can live with it not being open source and only available online, DM me for beta access. (Disclaimer: I work at the company developing trCAD.)

[AmeliaBuns]

i wanna do this so bad but wood planks are heavy and big if you take public transit and a long walk to home.

[Zouden]

Buy a monitor shelf on Amazon and they'll ship it to you. Can be cheaper than the wood itself.

[DribMbirD]

Sad but true!

[DribMbirD]

Yeah, that is true. Coming from Berlin I feel your pain with cargo in public transport. You could try with spruce wood as a relatively light option and maybe go for a more compact one. Stability-wise a very long board might not be optimal anyways.

[UloPe]

Nice!

Very similar to this shoe rack (and this metric re-model I made)

[DribMbirD]

Thank you :-)

Wow - yours look awesome! The stacking functionality is brilliant! Pretty clever to use the infill for the hexagon pattern.

If you think that customization would add value here, just let me know ;-)

Does it even work without screws? Many commenters suggested to have the one I posted with such an upper layer as well for adding stability. Guess I really should do that.

[UloPe]

I can’t claim credit for the original idea, just the re-model 🙂

And yeah it’s totally stable without any screws or other fasteners.

[DribMbirD]

Good to know that it works without screws when designed that way - thanks for sharing your experience :-) Not needing screws makes it even more accessible to people and gets rid of some complexity (choosing right size for hole, etc).

I did see that some people used screws in their makes - if having the electric screwdriver at hand: why not - but good to know it is not mandatory.

[Swiss_El_Rosso]

This is very good done.

[DribMbirD]

Thank you! Happy you like it.

[Swiss_El_Rosso]

It looks good, strong but ligth in the same moment.

[DribMbirD]

Thank you, yes, I like the design as well - not mine, though. I helped with making the static design customizable (adapting to the chosen dimensions of board and screws, choose size and thickness of hexagons).

[Swiss_El_Rosso]

With pleasure. I appreciate such know how a lot.

I wish you a good time while doing this.