HELP with a swmbo project

davidh

davidh

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my wife works at home, on a computer all day, and has asked me to figure out a way she can easily raise and lower her 6 legged desk about 20 inches with the push of a button. and to do it in about 20 seconds. :)


AND, not to be butt-ugly. . . .

she knows i can make nearly anything she wants or needs but i really need help with this one. i am looking for ideas from all you wizards. this could be a design that you could possibly make and sell to offices that could really aid in the health benefits of a crew that does not sit on their butts.

im told there are commercial units somewhere that incorporate an under-desk slow treadmill too but heck, anyone can buy one, we're builders of stuff, we should be able to design and build one.

electric screws, scissor jacks, air or hydraulic cylinders, there must be a good and reasonable way to do this. . .. . I’d even consider putting a couple rails vertical on the wall behind the desk to help stabilize it.

please ?
 
How about a picture of the desk? If it is in a corner you can use a piece of channel aluminum in the corner and spring load the legs. Use a screw lock to hold the height at the channel. That was a quickie, let me think on this.

"Billy G" :thinking:
 
I'm guessing she basically wants to switch between a sitting and standing desk on the fly? Sounds like a cool project. I agree with Bill, pics of the desk will help. If she is willing to switch desks, that may also give you more flexibility in designing.

If she has a wooden desk, and is attached to it, the only way I can see to do it is to have a screw jack in each foot; a wooden desk is not going to have enough structural integrity to lift from one side. The trick here will be to get all the jacks to move in unison.

The easiest way I can think of to do something like this is to have linear rails and a drive screw attached to the back wall. These would be pretty easy to cover with a shell, so it doesn't look like crap-ola. A simple steel frame desktop attached to these and you would only have to control a single actuator. Since this doesn't have to be super precision, you don't need anything fancy for the linear rails, there are lots of plans out there that use skate bearings, and should be reasonably simple to build. for the drive screw, you could probably get by with regular threaded rod for a while, but it will likely wear quickly. I would go with an acme screw if you want it to last.

Another possibility with a wooden desk is to have a false desktop over the real desk. Raise that, and leave the real desk behind (along with all the drawers and weight). Depending on what she does, and what she needs at here fingertips, you may only need to support a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

Please let us know how you progress, this sounds like a great project.
 
It probably won't make any difference in the overall approach, but standard desk is 30" high so adding 20 inches will make it 50" high which seems a bit high to me. I'm around 6' tall and I don't think I could do much on a surface that high. Just a test of reasonableness before you go stretching for that last inch only to find it's not needed. If there are multiple lift devices, synchronizing them will be the trick. What's under the floor where the desk sits? Is the lift part of the desk or part of the building? As suggested above, a scissor lift on just the top would be a cute solution as long as you can keep your fingers out of it when it's descending.
 
thinking outside the box helps. the table in the link looks like an old drafting table. . . i wonder if the springs in those old draft tables would be sufficent ? or a desktop mounted on the desktop would also work quite nice. . . . im going to expand both of those ideas and look for others like possibly just lifting the keyboard and monitor would suffice. . . . .

the existing desk is a typical metal desk with drawers on one side, right down to the floor, and it is a computer desk with monitor on it and a hide-away keyboard mount. it is the property of her employer.

she wants to be able to walk a treadmill when she is doing her computer work. someone sells hideaway treadmills for this purpose and she will buy one of those if i can figure out the desklift thing.

please keep thinking. . . this could be a marketing thing for someone here. im not interested in that, just to get 1 to work for my bride.
 
davidh said:
...she wants to be able to walk a treadmill when she is doing her computer work.
Click to expand...

Okay, way outside the box:

Mount an iMac--or Mac mini and monitor--, keyboard and swipe pad on the treadmill, and vnc or otherwise screenshare into the base computer. She retains ownership of her equipment while the employer's equipment remains untouched.
 
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