So here’s my first do-it-yourself project, involving suspending my monitor above my desk in order to free up some desk space for homework and the like. My options were spend $100+ on a specially-made bracket that might not fit where I want it to, or make one myself for a quarter of the price and a few hours of work. I opted with the latter.

Step 1: Bolts

The first step was to identify what bolts were needed to actually mount the bracket. Samsung is a Japanese company, and as such uses a metric system of measurement. Knowing that, it was a process of finding out the standard for the bracket (VESA 75, which indicates a 75mmx75mm square with the bolt holes in each corner), and then finding out what the bolts used actually were, which were notated as “M4″ something or other. The M4 was the only important part.

Step 2: Back Bracket

Step 2 was to figure out how to actually get the mount to fit onto the monitor. Luckily, this was easy, as Samsung had holes already in the back for their own expensive brackets. Thus, it was a matter of cutting the wood to fit and then giving it some pizazz with rounded(-esque) corners. The bracket was held in with the bolts and some small washers.

Step 3: Plans

Step 3 was the thinking part: how to accomplish what I wanted to do. My dad had the more knowledgeable insight into the matter, but nevertheless we jotted down some ideas on a piece of plywood. It was simple in concept, and we quickly decided that an articulated arm would be more desirable than a single swivel arm or no arm at all - and so we went with that.

Step 4: Arms

Using some aluminum plating that we got at Home Depot, my dad and I fashioned a couple of arms for the wall mount. The idea was to use two pieces of aluminum per arm, with a spacer at the joint and using wing nuts and washers to fasten the whole thing. Again, simple in concept, but it would prove tricky to do. For added security, one of the two holes on each piece of aluminum was filed into a square to accommodate the square top of the bolts we used. I don’t have any pictures of this process, but it’s fairly easy to accomplish with a vice grip and a file.

Step 5: Wall Mount

Step 5 was another simple design that proved tricky to execute. It was simply two pieces of wood that would rest on my window sill, but later on in the process my dad and I would discover that there was no baseboard to be found underneath the sill, which was odd since my dad built our house and has a particular way about doing windows. That was for a later time, though. It was quick to pull off and easy to fit to the metal.

Step 6: Putting it all together

Now that we had everything we needed cut and aligned, it was time to screw it all together. This required the prolific usage of rubber washers, lock washers, wing nuts and spacers, and after a lot of trial and error we finally came up with a combination of these that worked - to a point, at least. My future plan is to make a pin system that’ll allow me to change the angle of the back-most arm without it slowly sliding down, which is what will otherwise happen over a long period of time. In any case, the final arrangement looks like this:

Conclusion

The total cost of this project was somewhere around $25, and as a result I have a nifty monitor setup that frees up a lot of space on my desk and looks cool as well. It’s an easy do-it-yourself project and is well worth the few hours it takes to get it going.

The End