Metal PC Design
This was what I started with. The desk computer was something else I built that I will include in another page. As you can see there are three screens, but the left one is connected to a Sky box so not part of the setup. The two other monitors are mounted to Ergotron mounts which are infinitely adjustable and are very good for spacing as I have done, or going to portrait view. You can have one on top of the other or anything really you fancy. Ergotron also do a lot of professional solutions like those stations that Doctors and Nurses wheel around - generally ergonomic solutions.
They do charge a premium but the quality is very good and they are well engineered. The arms have adjustable tensioners so that monitors of different weights behave as you want and don't flop or move too easily.
This was the first part in that I had sourced a lot of tubing from retail suppliers as I had built a clothes hanging solution in my bedroom as I never really liked wardrobes. I had quite a lot left over and I began to design a replacement for the desk.
The design is based on the idea of a Jig that most builders use to test etc. I wanted the PC to be "just there" in front of me, but safe so that any visitors or myself wouldn't have to worry about the computer being out in the open.
As you can see I played around a lot. The shelf tubing has a 25mm diameter, which is also what the retail tubes are supplied in. The tubes are easy to cut despite being chrome plated steel and the clamps hide my errors but grip it really tight.
Everything is adjustable or interchangeable by a 6mm Allen key. Using an improvised seal I was able to use the Ergotron arms on the structure. The seal steadied them and there is a clamp underneath them to stop them sliding down. In the final design I just mounted two horizontal bars, to a shorter vertical bar which as you can see below housed the satellite box also. It had so much strength is was easily able to support the monitors and adjusting them.
This was the main part for the computer. I had a piece of Perspex cut and had drilled the holes for the motherboard to be mounted on. The perspex is transparent black as I had had the idea to both hide the PSU, but show the fan. (I unfortunately had to change the fan myself as in those days illuminated PSU's weren't common). I also had difficulty trying to find a PCI extender for the graphics card as again they were not as common as they are now.
I particularly liked the solution I came up with for the GPU, in that it is articulated and can move forwards or backwards for access. I later changed for a swing arm which was less fussy, but I always was fond of that idea.
The backplate is held in place by clamps which are I guess designed to hold placards. It was funny how many things I could use.
At this point I had removed the desk and replaced my workspace with a Beech table top I purchased from Ikea.
As you can also see I wanted to remove the frame as I wanted to see how much weight it could support. Two horizontals are used & I had purchased some unusual eye bolts from a sailing site that went around the bottom bar and through the desk. One either end was sufficient. I then used clamps along the two horizontal lengths to equalise and strenghten the force through the structure.
The clamps tighten so much that I was able to have just two supporting the actual computer and if I loosened them, the computer could swing down to enable me to have access to the back where the drives and wiring were.
Note: For the positioning of the horizontal bars, I positioned them as far back and as low as I could for rigidity, safety and stability. Although I used diagonals for the legs, their positioning had to be as low & as forward as possible.
Above left was my final design and above right was when I was looking at different mountings for the GPU. The picture to the left was when I was thinking of a cover but as you can see I would have needed a lighter tint. The final design also shows the PSU showing through the lower part of the computer after I'd changed the fan. I'd spaced it around an inch from the back for airflow.
I decided against the enclosure as it defeated the object, although a few people liked it. As most computer builders know airflow is paramount and in an open design, nothing gets in the way.
By this point I had cancelled Sky and was using a Humax-satellite box which I had mounted in the frame itself (the white box under the right monitor). The design was quite stable but would have been more rigid had I fixed it to the wall, which I didn't want to do.