Build A Sturdy Cardboard Laptop Stand

I use an empty 3 ring binder (which gives it a nice slant) and add books underneath for height.

Enough money for a Mac but not for a stand? Priorities be damned.

cipotefello

@VenitiaMeshuggah: No, being a jack ass about it is. =)

Typo fixed!

cardboard? my unibody MBP gets so hot, the stand would erupt in flames

AntoinetteAsterius

Just tried it and it didn't work out very well, I would recommend finding some Hard cardboard, and you might want to scale it down a bit. The angle after you build it is a little extreme and I'm afraid that the laptop would fall over lol. But still I like the idea though.

lbrtdy

Isn't pointing out typo's banned now?

VenitiaMeshuggah

I love easy, cheap tips such as this.

My first laptop was a Toshiba A-135 (horrible laptop, I don't recommend it) and I always sat with it on the carpet. This stand could have saved me some serious bucks on repairs from overheating.

I might put me together one of these for my new laptop!

@mahimahi42: That's not grammar. That's spelling. :P

cool option, when i run out of jenga blocks to prop my laptop up then i might try this

laughingisfree

@mahimahi42: I think the picture serves as a Y. Look at the laptop + stand diagonally, and you will see this. I've seen this technique at the start of many book chapters :)

I also can't believe you spelled grammar wrong in your calling out of his mistake... that's pretty funny right there :D

*laughs to self* "You [guys] make me want to be a better [geek]", think Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets"

HelixScanr

@mahimahi42: Darn, speaking of, it should be Grammar =/

That's excellent! Good for my non-existant budget.

Oh, and not trying to be a Grammer Nazi, but the first word should have a "Y".

You could make this from white foam board, available at craft and office supply stores, and it would have that white, Apple-y look.

BerniceDeianeira

The day I trust a flimsy cardboard stand to hold up my beautiful unibody mac...

For the piece of mind that it's not going to fall over, I'd just buy the Griffin Elevator and be done with it :)

@shadowdcs: Heh try it out and tell me how that goes.

@Samu Wade: Meh, it's ok. I'd still go for this one though.

Brilliant idea. I'd love to be able to make a whole desk out of cardboard.

shadowdcs

"...why drop more cash on an overpriced laptop stand?"

Because it's soooooooo prettyyyyyyy....

[www.raindesigninc.com]

The cardboard one looks great for people with more sense than I have, though.

Samu Wade

Same here, it'll do good for the ventilation of the laptop also.

lbrtdy

Oh man. This actually looks pretty good. I guess I can give it a try.

Dav1dC

That looks good but I rather use an egg tray for my laptop. It is sturdy, good air flow, very light weight, and FREE.

GT2furious

That 0.10$ stand looks great with that 2500$ MacBook. Great way to protect your investment as well. Cereal, there is a limit how far you can go with certain ideas.

Mateusz Romek Traczyk

@lbrtdy:

I had to heavily modify the design myself. The lip was too small to hold up my laptop, and the angle was too much and made it too back heavy. I added another front cross piece, and two more cut outs to add a lip to the front to hold up the laptop

LordDaMan

I guess, if you put any more money into a laptop stand, you'd be worried about the stand breaking more than your laptop.

I wanna make one of these out of clear acrylic or something. Use the same pattern. That would look swanky.

@BerniceDeianeira: But then I would be tempted to eat it... don't ask.

@shadowdcs: A few months ago I was in a store that sold furniture made out of cardboard. There were chairs, tables, etc. And they were really sturdy, so it's definitely possible!

Awesome.

This is the kind of post I appreciate most from Lifehacker.

For my Intro to Engineering Principles course waaaay back in the day, our class was required to each build a chair out of corrugated cardboard that could support at least 200lbs - it was a surprise to me at the time how little cardboard I really needed, so I have no problem with this at all.

About the only things I think I would do is double up the cardboard(nothing's worth engineering if you can't overengineer it :) ) and add a panel to the left (or right, depending on handedness) to serve as a typing stand

critter42

Cool thought, but i'll pass on breaking $2k worth of laptop because I was an idiot and spent 2 cents on a stand.

bfreeman

Didn't like the look of that.

I guess it's okay if you want one that stands it up as a display, but as a stand that lets you use the laptop, it's pretty useless.

I personally would have gone to a X design, with two horizontal ribs that fits in for reinforcement. You want to use corrugated cardboard for that. The X design will probably be sturdier and better for ventilation (and accomodate more sizes, as you can customize the ribs for specific laptop sizes).

@Samu Wade:

it's all about the iLap. have one and nothing beats it for not scorching balls on the couch. as for desk placement, it does the job but free is free i guess.

kerplaw

My friend makes these
[www.cardboardlaptopstand.co.uk]

He should have cut multiples of each piece, then glued them together for added thickness (and strength).

If you can't find heavy duty cardboard, glue some light duty cardboard together. Criss-cross the corrugations and two or three layers becomes very sturdy. For shaping after the layers are glued together, I use a wood rasp. I'm making a guitar stand right now. I'm using Tyvek as a hinge.

@VenitiaMeshuggah:

maybe it should be. i suspect in coding if one adds an extra mark it could derail a whole program, so adding an apostrophe is probably in the same vein.

"typo's" ???

and yes, i appreciate, that's not a grammatical error it's a punctuation error.

ffolliet

@jccalhoun: I do exactly the same, but unfortunately the only large boos I have are my language dictionaries and being a languages student makes having a stand the right height an intermittent thing :S

Rosydoodles

If I wasn't in college and so busy I'd post a detailed step by step of my setup. Pretty much imagine a shoebox. Now rotate it so your looking at one of the sides
now cut it diagonally. Then, place it down, it should look like an ultra-wide doorstop. Now adjust the angle with small items below the front part of the laptop.

xacked

i was trying to figure something out after i saw the price of the laptop stand/cooler. i ended up getting a $1 paper tray, sniping the feet off and using it upside down. my notebok sat perfectly on top of the bottom and i had a little storage area underneath

OK I think we get it. You can take junk, put it under your laptop, and make a laptop stand.

Um, yeah I tried this. I think the biggest reason it turned out in the garbage bin is for three major reasons:
1. Too thick cardboard
2. I suck at building things
3. I really suck at building things :D

This Rocks!!

Jose Carlos Torres

@djheath:

Does your friend make any considerable money on that?

jupiterthunder

This will change the world. Now, when you spill your drink, you shout, "Oh noes, my laptop stand!"

jupiterthunder

@bill cant fart:

Does eating foam board have anything to do with you not being apple to fart?

jupiterthunder

@Bill Clark: I have to agree with Bill. Unless you're talking about a trashy old laptop you don't care about, I think it's a bad idea to trust your expensive and delicate jewel of technology to cardboard. No knock against the stand's design, just the construction material. Especially if you live anywhere that's humid, you might find the cardboard much less sturdy than you'd thought.

Jerry J. Davis

Is anyone actually comfortable using a laptop with nothing between the south end of the keyboard and the table surface but 3-4" of air? It just doesn't look comfortable to me.

OneTrickPony

@Samu Wade: I have the same one and I also bought it because it's magnificent. It was like a little more than one of those griffin elevators people were saying dumps your laptop on the floor.

I think everyone needs to build a laptop stand before they buy one to see if they like it. My first one was built out of car parts boxes.

@xacked: a photo would help here...

@Dragonis: yea, but wouldn't cutting it be a pain not to have the knife marks on the edge?

This just looks like a big fire hazard to me.

MePerson

Check this out

[www.prankmike.com]

xtremeleafan

@bill cant fart: Just be careful not to spill your drink on it.

Jmange

@AntoinetteAsterius: This might help that, giving it more clearance for cooling.

VenomIreland says click the heart button.

I tried this with my dell xps m1530

needless to say, it failed badly

nwo28

@OneTrickPony: I have my laptop jacked up on a couple large books, however I don't type on the keyboard, I use an external keyboard / mouse when at my desk.

I wouldn't be concerned with this at all. Cardboard, especially doubled up, is actually very strong. I'll be building one of these. I'll make a couple changes of course, but the basic idea is sound.

CRE4TED

No way would I waste precious cardboard from boxes that could be used to ship Ebay items.

I use the foot of my bed as a laptop stand.

Do you have instructions for use with particle board or oak?

@johnsmith1234:

Yup.

You can take the same junk, put it under a speaker and make it a speaker stand, like cinder blocks.

Deprong Mori

Made the stand this morning, wicked. My only recommendation would be to make the 'hooks' a little deeper on the front; my Macbook tended to slip off from the base stencil cuts.

Jake Wratt

if someone wants a different look...then paint it. put a design on it...be creative...

@jtimberman: +1

some@Dav1dC: something about cardboard and sturdy just makes me think twice..

Kyle Thorpe

@jthatch: My old higschool has a CNC machine. Its good to make friends with the tech teacher.

I have been inpsired by this post to put a cardboard shoebox under my laptop to align the top edges of my laptop and 19" screen. Thank you lifehacker.

dclindy

Thanks for the details. Laptop stands cost a lot here in South Africa and this would help out.

YvonneThetis

Seems pretty unstable and dangerous. Ye guys have to make diferance between good and bad ecolo concepts.. It would become stable with a few more rows on each of the 3 parts. Like 5 slices by piece and a lot of tape or glue :) Ye guys should update the post with these infos. now for homemade tape or glue :P lol

FrancesHorn

Not exactly sturdy but cool nonetheless.

RaniaKonowalchuk

Just made it myself. Had to reduce the incline a little bit, might do it a little more. Check it out. http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e81/leach0789/0510091741.jpg http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e81/leach0789/0510091741a.jpg

ShorashiLachesis

I found that the stapler that I never use works really well as a laptop rest. I rest the back of the laptop on the stapler, and the front on the desk - bingo, elevation and air circulation.

ShamimAlbinus

this might be a good use for leftover campaign signs. also i think that there should be at least two triangles in there somewhere. thing looks like it is going to parallelogram easily.

@bill cant fart: I've also seen plans on the web for cardboard furniture made from shipping boxes. You can't fold up a desk-sized piece and tote it around in your backpack, but it's definitely economical.

shadowdcs

@bill cant fart: Where was this store? I would be interested to see their Web Site.

hackley01

@BerniceDeianeira: I have a whole black foam board left over from a cable hiding project i did with my desk. I might try this out im sure it would make the whole design much stronger and would look alot better black then the brown of cardboard.

Read it over lunch and built it before I had to go back to work. Sits about right, though the Lexan ones would be even cooler. The tabs at the front that hold the laptop could be a bit stronger, but it is cheap cardboard...

sprale

@Bill Clark: then use something other than cardboard (lexan, aluminum sheet, plastic, wood etc.)

Great proof of concept. But I don't change my own oil, and I am not entrusting my machine to something that could very well fail.

DangerousLiberal

Great idea, and I even like the natural color of the cardboard, too. But I also think if one painted it with flat black paint, it could look more sophisticated. Alternatively, using aluminum paint, or a combination of the black and aluminum, would create something really stellar, especially for the MacHeads among us.

graphophone

Most areas have some kind of custom plastics manufacturer that can and will handle little jobs like this. In the Western US, Tap Plastics is a good example. My partner got some custom acrylic doo-dad cut the other day in order to mount our GPS in the console, instead of gluing crap to the middle of our dashboard. We got exactly what we needed, and it cost all of a ripping $2. Just bring in the template and ask - gotta be a lot easier than stabbing yourself in the hand with a box cutter.

ShakeelKaboo

is this a joke? cardboard for laptop stand? seriously? I bought a cheap laptop stand/fan in HK for $5.... why not just spend the money to get a proper stand? anything has to be better than just some crappy cardboard

ToddCarson

I whipped one up from an old iMac box. Very sturdy, even with my MBP. I think the key here is to make sure the grain of the cardboard is vertical. Thanks!!

DanaAlcmene

All I need now is the plans for a cardboard table + cardboard chair - I wouldnt want to spend my hard earned cash on anything else after spending it all on laptop.....** cough cough...cheapskates After all - the laptop is just sitting on the floor.

OscarAgave

We all knew this was going to happen one day... :P

Actually, I might try this one out. It was all well and good to have my laptop get warm in the winter, but now that summer is coming, it's not so good.

I saw this article today only, my weekend vacation got a little longer this time :)

I too had recently made a stand, for my tablet though... have a look.

[virtualmic.wordpress.com]

Saurabh Agrawal