Cardboard Tablet Support

I recently rooted out an old android tablet to use as an outlook notification screen (this uses an app called spacedesk) this is handy as you don't need to occupy a whole screen with email but I need to keep an eye on whats coming in....

The problem I had was that the tablet kept falling over, I didn't want to by a self standing cover as the tablet lives on the end of my standing desk. I saw this one by Todd Gehris and decided to make my interpretation.

Time to raid the bin.

I started out with a flap from a reasonably heavy cardboard I found in our recycling bin.

Using some precision guessing and counting corrugations in the cardboard I drew out the design you see in image 2.

My table is 7" and if its any use, the unit is 30 corrugations wide overall, the small peak to trough is 4 corrugations and the center line is where the lines meet, the heights were made purely visually, like I said precision guessing :-)

I cut the whole shape out with a straight edge (some DIN rail off the floor by my desk) and a very sharp box cutter.

The edges of the cardboard looked prime to tear and break up so I rolled out the engineers friend, duct tape.

Folding a strip of duct tape all around the edges, I sealed and strengthened the structure.

When I looked at the edge sealed stand it was pretty ugly, I decided to fill in the rest with more duct tape and tidy (and further strengthen) the whole thing up. The finishing at the edges is not perfect but it does look better.

The stand was folded along a straight edge ans then along in line with the bottom of the small troughs.

A length of duct tape was used to stop the stand springing open and some more used on the back of this to stop everything sticking to it.

As you can see the support is set up to accept the tablet in both portrait and landscape formats.

It is actually incredibly strong and still folds down flat to go into my drawer or my bag if needed.

I think the same design would work if scaled down for a phone or up for a laptop.