A Very Cost-Effective Monitor Mount
[February 2011] A lot of factors motivate projects and solve problems: among them are the budgetary issues, time, and the ingenuity of the engineer. Jonathan Bowen took care of a need with some on-hand materials and virtually no money at all.
I needed to find a low cost way to mount a flat panel monitor on a rack. My 6’4” manager was quite happy with simply stacking it on the top of the rack, but that just did not work for me.
While there are some nice commercial brackets available for $60 to $80, I just did not want to spend even that much. So I had this idea and it worked out very nicely. Since I know there are lots of people who have to try and save as much as they can, I thought I would share the idea.
Using What Was Available
Basically, I was able to accomplish this project with some scrap lumber and hardware that was already on hand.
The mount required three pieces of the lumber, a handful of washers and screws, a nut and bolt, and a little paint. The whole thing really did not take long – no more than an hour or two to construct.
As you can see, the way I did it was to make a cap that fits on the top of the rack. The front piece was used to mount the display; the back piece was to anchor the mount to the rack for stability. Conveniently, the bolt fit through an existing hole in the rack.
The front piece is a flat bit of plywood with holes drilled in order to mount the monitor. I painted it silver to blend in with the rack but it was mostly for me – you do not see it at all from the front.
A Successful Project
All in all, it worked out exactly as planned. Yes, the monitor is kind of high in the rack. However, in our case it is only a secondary monitor for convenience. As it sits, it the bottom of the screen is about at eye level. If it had been more important, I could have made the front piece of plywood larger and the monitor could have been mounted lower, closer to the lower monitor in the picture.
Total out of pocket cost: $ 0.00.
Hard to beat that!
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Jonathan Bowen is the Chief Engineer for WPCS in Pensacola, Florida. He can be reached by email at jonbowen234@gmail.com