Custom Designed Laptop Stand From Reclaimed Woods.

I needed something to raise my laptop screen to improve my posture, so i decided to make a laptop stand, and i went an extra step further by using reclaimed woods and scavenged electronic components!

The first step that i had to do was designing the stand and setting requirements that i desire. Here are my requirements for my custom laptop stand

Requirements

1. The stand must be durable enough to support 2kg load without showing structural integrity
2. The stand should be aesthetically pleasing (in other words, shouldn't look to cheap)
3. The stand needs to have cooling fans and USB ports for convenience

I think i spent about one week figuring out the design . Because this laptop stand is for myself, i was able to make every aspect of the design such as height is based on my personal preference. The height of the stand in my design is a little higher than that of of commercially available products because i want to be able to loot straight and straighten my back while using my laptop. (after all, isn't being able to do however you want the whole point of DIY?? haha)

After i came up with a design that i was pleased with, i went on to making 2D CAD file of it. I used Aspire software to create my design, but you can use just about any vector graphics tool available out there.

Because i was going to use reclaimed woods, i decided to make the vertical parts out of two boards to increase the structural integrity. This way also made inserting center pieces more convenient as well.

* i have attached the DXF files if you need em.

the large spacer board has two big circles cut off for cooling fans

The woods that i used were quite dusty and had finishes on them, so i had to cut off some parts and run them through planers.

After that, i just put the wood into the laser cutter, uploaded the DXF, changed some settings and ran the machine.

Because the woods were pretty thick (around 15mm) i had to really slow down the speed and increase the output in order to cut them.

*****Extra info***** the reason woods in this project are dusty is because they were previously wooden book shelves thrown away at the basement car park by one of our apartment complex neighbor quite long ago. Although i should've taken picture or something, i didn't know i was going to end up entering a contest.

When cutting was done, the products seemed pretty dirty with all the ashes on the surfaces. Also, because i was inexperienced with using wood glues, i ended up not joining the two pieces 100% clearly. Therefore, i sanded down the surface and sides to get them as nice and even as possible.

But i kinda liked the contrast made by burned part of the wood, so i decided to kinda bring it back using stain. After that, i coated everything with two coats of water based varnish.

I salvaged all the electronic components from thrown off electronic devices as well. Installing fan was as simple as connecting the fans to DC jack through the toggle switch. I fixed everything on the board using hot-glues.

The cooling fans are powered by a separate 12V DC power supply.

After the unit was finished, i used wood glues to fix everything together.

When the wood glue cured, my personal laptop stand was finished.

the good thing about this project is that every material is reclaimed or salvaged from thrown off stuffs, therefore, i only needed to spend a few dollars for public transportation to get to nearby maker space.

The stand is bearing my heavy laptop pretty well. As you can see in the pic, i can place keyboard or something else underneath the laptop.