MDR - Monitor Desk Riser

I was visiting my buddy in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, and I noticed a pretty sleek minimalist monitor riser he had on his desk. It looked pretty modular - a few chopped sections of a nicely shaped aluminum extrusion + 3 pieces of plywood. I liked the simplicity and versatility of the design. I forgot to ask him about it so ended up reverse image searching it through Google (which is quite impressive when it works). He has the Modos Design Monitor Stand. They make some pretty cool stuff!

Inspiration: the Modos Design Monitor Stand.

I had never really thought about monitor risers before, but his setup looked pretty nice and I could see some potential value add from elevating my monitor:

  • The monitor riser would create a bit of extra storage space under the monitor

  • Lifting the monitor closer to eye level could be good for ergonomics

  • The top platform of the riser could be a good place to put an external webcam above my laptop monitor but not super high up on top of my external monitor

At work, we’re currently in the process of switching to Onshape from SolidWorks. I’m trying to quickly get some reps with the new program. I’m always tinkering with personal projects and designing/3D printing little objects for my home. Designing a parametric 3D printed bracket that I could use to make a DIY monitor riser seemed like a fun way to do a bit highly parametric surfacing in Onshape and work through some of the basic pain points that come with learning any new software.

I did a pretty quick proof of concept to make sure a 3D printed bracket would do the job. It took me a few iterations to get the fitment and design to a good place. I tablesawed a couple of pieces of scrap plywood to thoughtfully arbitrary sizes and put everything together - and it worked out pretty well! It got the job done, but I didn’t think the design was refined. The bracket had some pretty simple extruded features and wasn’t as elegantly parametric as I’d prefer.

Since I had already validated the critical functional details, I had a great time rebuilding the bracket design from the ground up. I definitely encountered a few frustrations with Onshape (no “mutual trim” of surfaces, no straightforward “knit” of surfaces), but it’s a totally functional program. I’m sure my workflow will update the more that I use it.

The new design is highly parametric. I included the wood pieces in the multibody model so that the CAD file would generate dimensioned 2D based on the desired width and final height. I want to make it super easy to customize this design for anybody who wants it.

I made a bunch of small refinements when rebuilding the design. Here’s a gallery of detailed notes on the updates.

I’m trying to get more work out into the world, so the brackets are now available for purchase in the webshop!

[2022]