Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi everyone,

just recently I decided to buy myself another two 28" displays to go with my Viewsonic VX2835wm and to replace my 4 year old 19" TFT.
To drive these beauties I ordered myself two Powercolor HD6870.

Now while I am waiting for my Radeons the monitors were delivered and boy are they huge. Definitely nothing you just slap on your table and hope for the best.
So I sat down thinking:
How will I fix these monitors relative to each other?

After a bit of toying with several ideas I had a talk with my father and we got a nice and easy to build setup for a Triple Monitor Swingstand.

The Setup:
Three monitors sporting VESA mounts, the vx2835wm a 200x100mm the to Hanns.G HH281HPB a 100x100mm.
A wooden computer desk.
Standardset of tools and screws
2x 135° metal angles
1x 90° reinforced metal angle for heavy weights
3000x144x28mm wood
4m of highly durable (2t) polyester band

The later 4 together are the basis for the stand and cost about 15€

I'll upload pics later on of the building process.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome :)

Regards,
Justus
*UPDATE*
If anybody wants to build this, I'd strongly recommend buying 6 135° angles! I will discuss this later in the thread, but 2 angles are definitely not enough and even 4 seem a bit shaky. After all you're hanging a few hundred bucks on parts worth less than one buck, so don't save on the part that's cheap anyway ;)
And don't even think about fastening the angles with woddscrews, you NEED these M4 screws going through the wood and fastened on the other side. Simple woodscrews will disintegrate the device within the year.

Work is still in progress but I got a few pictures of the setup, sorry for the bad image quality I had to take these with my N900:
*tadaaaa* My work is half done!


The panels match allmost to the milimeter.


The right Hanns.G


The right connector.


The Viewsonic, as you can see it isn't fastened correct. I misjudged the size by 4mm so the lower screws won't fit. I'll fix this tomorrow by enlargening the bottom holes.


The left Hanns.G


The right connector in detail. I had misjudged the forces at work here so I didn't have enough angles. One brass plate and a bit of hammering later I had this.


The two 135° angles at work.


Well, somebody liked this shady and secluded space for sure!



More pics and finish tomorrow.

Good night,
Justus

Beautiful mate.

_________________
System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

Love the cat. :D

I am done.
And my head is totally achin from so much space to cope with :lol:

Like some really enervating people once stated on 4chan: pics or it didn't happen!
Well, so be it!

The holes now fit for my vx2835wm.


The sweeeeeet sound of freshly packed goodies :D


And here they are. Find the missing Picture ;)


Didn't find it? Well it isn't there. What is missing is a PSU. All I have right now is a 480W Modu 82+, so no Crossfire for starters :roll:


The left stand foot in detail.


The left nook for the swing.


Final assembly!


Aaaaaaaaand it's done! (almost)


The swing mechanism, the construction can be tilted and swiveled as you want it ;)



And here it is (finally) in all its perfectness!


I'll be gone over the weekend, but I'll check back in next week with building instructions, and hopefully a better PSU ;)

Regards,
Justus

Ugh wish I had the tools and space to build a triple monitor stand, im tired of my 3 monitors stands hogging all my deskspace that I need for other stuff.

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ViciousXUSMC on the Web - YouTube :: FaceBook :: Website

It actually isn't that hard to build.
You need the named material, a jigsaw, a meterstick and a drilling machine.
Most of the stuff can be bought off the shelf some stores will offer to cut the material sold to you for free even.
Something I noticed earlier, could it be, that this community doesn't have all that many DIY-guys? ;)

Now on to the building instructions I promised some time ago ;)

First off: get yourself some help. The whole construction can be built within a solid mornings work, but some of the steps are allmost impossible to do alone.

Parts marked with #vmo# may be skipped if you have monitors of the same build.


Step one: Preliminarys
Read these instructions through completely. Really. Then get the material. You don't want to make the same mistakes I did (and there are a few) and most of them stem from not knowing what I will end up with.
You'll need:
1. 3x 66cm wood that is at least 4cm wider than your monitors mountingsystem, usually that means 10cm + 4cm = 14cm if you have varying monitors add another 2cm for height tolerance
2. 2x 70cm wood, I'd suggest the same as for #1
3. 4m polyester band (highly durable), it's not expensive, get the heaviest duty type you can, 2t is enough, try less only at your own peril!
4. 6x 135° angles, these will define the viewing angle on your screens, I'd suggest testing this out before, a little bending may be applied but needs a vice and a hammer (I'd suggest ear protection :D)
5. 2x 90° heavy duty angles
6. M4 Screw + 2 washers + screw nut, a lot of them, for all the mounts AND for all the angles. That's 4 for each mount + 4 for each angle + spares! important: the screws won't go all the way into the mounting system, check how thick your wood from #1 has to be so the screws will fit! I ended up having to use 3 washers just to rig up my vx2835wm!

Tools: a drilling machine + stand, a 6mm drill, a jigsaw, some sanding paper, a file, a wrench, a meterstick, a try square, a pencil to write on the wood

Step two: the marking
#vmo# Align your monitors and check if they are of the same height and espacially if their mounts are of the same height.
Check how wide the monitor in the middle is, for most 28"ers this should be around 66cm, the length for #1 should be the width of your monitors.
Mark the middle of one the boards, this is going to be the one centered, write that down on it!
Paint two straight lines that are 5cm from the center (one left of, one right of) by using the try square.
These measurements are for standard vesa 100x100 mounts, do the math yourself for other mounts, if you need to ask you probably shouldn't build it on your own ;)
Assuming you got 14cm wide wood, mark a place on each line that is 2cm from the top and 12cm from the top.
#vmo# If your monitors are 2cm out of line you'll need to make these 2+1cm and 12+1cm, if your monitors are further apart it's difference/2 I'd suggest to use
On to the angles, place the center board and one of the others right next to each other as they will be placed in final assembly, place one angle at the bottom then mark two holes with the pen. Repeat for the other two positions of the angles (middle+top). Repeat for the other side. Work accurate, small mistakes here can make medium displacements later on.

Step three: the Drill
You have a marked center board, congratulations. Now recheck it. If you had to compensate varying monitor sizes do it again. The holes for the mount are exactly 10cm (=100mm) apart? The markings on the side mach the angles? There are no visibly distorted parts, meaning the angles are placed parallel to the center board? Fine. If you think this is paranoid: I had to redrill 6 holes because I didn't do this. No fun in that.
On to the acutal drilling. I strongly recommend a stand for your drill. While this is no workpiece where precision is critical, it's still hard to work with 1mm precision without any aids. Use a 6mm drill and check that you're still right measurementside after every single hole! Even with aids like a stand any drill will move slightly in regard to the woods structure. Once you're done drilling all holes, you screw in the angles, then mount it on the back of your center TFT. If it fits: congratulations, if it doesn't you have a problem. Find a solution yourself or come back here asking for help with detailed images ;)

Coming tomorrow -> Step four: Attaching the sides

Regards,
Justus

P.S.: If somebody has suggestions feel free to post them, I don't see much resonance on this, is it just because nobody really cares or because everybody is deeply cowed by me steamroller type of going about things? ;)

I don't have much to say really, its pretty damn cool. I've got some Ideas on doing it better but I'll keep them to myself until I actually follow through on them.

_________________
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

Im a huge DIY guy, but not on the woodwork side, its all in the electronics side.

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ViciousXUSMC on the Web - YouTube :: FaceBook :: Website

@Mobster: I'd really like to read your ideas, worst that could happen is I disregard them, but if they're sound I'll run 'em by my father who's the real mechanic in this household ;)
@ViciousXUSMC: ok, I walked into that one. Of course there are many good electronics DIY guys here, what I reall meant was the woodwork type ;)
I was with a nice german community "Kaltmacher" for some time and they really had some VERY good woodwork DIY guys. That's the direction I came from anyways, so it felt a little odd to not have a forum like this bursting with

Oh, and just by the way: the angles on the left side allready ARE warping (that's the bought angles, not the selfmade one, that one hasn't moved a milimeter ;)), I hope this stops soon, else I'm going to have to replace them.
Just to make sure everyone knows why this happens: the problem with this kind of three point mounting are the actual forces at work.
A force vector can be multiplied by the use of levers, and that leads to the relatively "small" weight of 20kgs of pixel estate to causing forces a few times stronger than what it should cause intuitively. When choosing the 2t band there were 2 considerations: 1. knotting it will half the durability 2. 1t means an 80% safety margin.
If everything had been hooked up at a single point in the back, 20kg roughly translate to 200N and these work over 1m, it would generate a sheering force of 2000N if it is fixed on a 10cm wide mount. From there on it's just a guestimate, and since it's cheap material we're talking about I decided not to err but to simply apply overwhelming force.
It appears my angles are to weak though ;)

Regards,
Justus