Copper Pipe Headphone Stand

I recently bought a pair of over-ear headphones but was always storing them on the floor when not using them on my PC (my desk is usually a mess). This culminated in a few incidents of running over the cable, which can't have been good for them.

So this got me thinking about making a headphone stand, buying a stand was out of the question as I had plenty of spare material at home to work with. So after a few minutes of sketching and planning, I got cracking.

I now present my first instructable - A copper pipe headphone stand.

This will take about 30 mins to prep the pipes (maximum) and a few hours spread out over a day or so to complete the soldering.

You will need:

Approximately 80cm of copper pipe

2 T junctions

3 90 degree corners

4 End caps

Soldering Flux + rag/brush to apply with.

Plumbing solder

Pipe cutter (Hacksaw will do at a push)

Blowtorch

Tongs or heatproof glove (Not essential but would help)

Vice or heatproof surface (Both if possible)

Plaster of Paris, Concrete or any other ballast.

From the photos you might be able to see that I used solder ring fittings, also known as Yorkshire Fittings. this was as much a design choice as one borne of convenience. I happened to have a stack of solder ring fittings and preferred the look of them to end feed fittings. This also had the benefit of convenience as soldering end feed fittings is tricky and I am a little out of practice. This project can be built with either fitting.

For the pipe, I used 22mm copper, however there is no reason why you cannot use 15mm or any other size.

This can be made any size you like really, the only limitation I imposed on myself was that it had to be able to hold 2 pairs of over ear headphones (Beyerdynamic DT-150 in this case).

As a result, the lengths are more or less arbitrary, however you will need to cut

For the base

2 Legs - These are governed by the width of your headphones, but must be long enough to give a stable base.

2 Short struts - These only need to be a few inches long

For the top section

1 Vertical strut - This is governed by the height of your headphones

1 Short connector - This only needs to be about 40mm/ 1,1/2 inch long (see image)

2 Horizontal struts - These are governed by the width of your headphones and should not be longer than the legs.

NOTE:

For ease of fabrication, I split this into two sections and made them separately, once they had cooled enough, they were combined.

Once the copper pipe has been cut to the required length the base can be assembled.

I found it best to do a dry fit to make sure it looked how I wanted. (see image)

I then broke it down into smaller sections and soldered one at once.

NOTE - I will not be covering how to solder pipes, there are some good guides available online. If you are not comfortable using a blowtorch but still want to do this project, a good strong glue could be used instead, something like THIS would do.

Anyway...

I began by soldering the caps onto the legs, then left them to cool

While the legs were cooling, I moved onto soldering the 90 degree corners onto the short struts.

I then soldered the 90 degree corners onto the legs.

Once these have cooled sufficiently, they can be combined with the T junction and these can be soldered.

When soldering the T junction on, I found it easiest to put the vertical strut in and clamp it to a speed square. This meant that a 90 degree angle could be maintained easily.

Once all of the soldering is complete for the base, you should have something that looks like the second image.

Now would be a good time to wipe up any flux residue and admire your soldering. It would also be good to check how watertight your joints are. If any have small holes, these can be patched up with some solder.

Now that you've made the base, you'll have an idea of what's coming next.

Following the same instructions, solder the remaining parts together to form the top.

This doesn't need to be done in any particular order, so go crazy.

However the main consideration is that the two horizontal struts run parallel. It would be easiest to achieve this by soldering them while the main stem is held vertically.

Sadly my phone died during this stage so not many photos, but I'm sure you can manage to piece it together from the instructions

This is a quick simple bit of soldering.

Basically, connect the stem to the base, and solder it in.

Told you it was easy...

You should have something like this now.

By now, your headphone stand is more or less ready.

I plan to fill mine with sand to stop it moving on my table, but this is completely optional.

It's the only reason I haven't capped the pipes on the top yet.

Will update the post with a photo when the whole thing is complete, but this may be a little while.

Enjoy!