Cardboard Macbook stand

Working from home, sitting at my desk can be a bit of strain on my neck, since I’m always looking down at the screen of my 15″ Macbook Pro. Researching the range of laptop stand options available from the Apple store and around, there didn’t to be anything that wasn’t either too expensive, flimsy, a little bit ugly, or all of the above. I thought, at the very least, I could solve the expensive part of that equation, and I get the joy of a make as a bonus.

I’d been thinking about making a DIY laptop stand for a few weeks, but a glut of reasonably strong cardboard from a recent trip to IKEA spurred me on to make it for real. In addition to cardboard, I also used double-sided tape, and brown packing tape.

It’s a really really simple design. Here’s the template:

I created two of everything here, and stuck them together with double-sided tape, so that each piece was twice-thickness (I guess 5-6mm thick in total). I also re-enforced the cardboard with packing tape – just wrapping it around and trimming it. This gave me two side panels, a front panel and a slightly thicker back panel.

Cuts were made where the dotted lines are shown on the template; about 1.5cm from the front and 2cm from the back on the side panels. (N.B. the ‘front’ is the lowest part on the side panel). All cuts were 2cm deep and wide enough for the thickness of the panels to slot together without a squeeze. On the front panel (the slightly thinner of the two 32cm long pieces, the cuts are made about 1cm from each end, and about 2cm from each end on the back panel. When assembled, this creates a slight tapering towards the back panel, rather than a more flimsy square.

This was designed for a 15″ Macbook Pro with room for an Apple bluetooth keyboard to nuzzle in underneath. I guess it could be prettier, but it does the job and disammembles and reassembles easily for going in and out of storage.