NEED:

• Need to put laptop right in front of my drum set

PROBLEM:

• Drum need to place close to a wall
• Can't drill / mount things on wall
• Require portability, able to move around easily.

SOLUTION:

• Tripod with a plate of some sort to hold laptop, make one of the tripod leg shorter so the stand can put as close to the wall as possible.

End up I search on Thingiverse and found the one and only one tripod assembly http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:423897, design by JuliaTruchsess. The size and structure is perfect and it even have pointy feet for carpet ! Grab the VESA mount plate made by imaicom and remix it a tiny little bit and design the pole mount, the whole package is there. Some wood work to cut out a wooden plate to hold the laptop and Bob is your uncle.

As for the tripod, you probably see I get one tripod leg shorter, that's is just to make it able to put the tripod as close to the wall as possible, for my own need. Nothing was change from Julia's design, so I didn't include it in here. You can just refer back to JuliaTruchsess thingiverse design (link above) for the whole instruction and STL file.

NOTE:

Since I use the laptop mainly for drum, I ain't going to rest my palm on it nor use the keyboard that often. ie. no weight is going to put on the front of the laptop, so I don't foresee the pole mount going to loose grip causing the plate to drop to the front and finding my laptop on the floor. Having said that, your usage may vary, please consider that before printing this as this is like a 24 hours print job and some wood, bolts and nuts purchase.

UPDATE:

The stand has been placed in front of the drum for roughly eight month, still holding strong, no dipping, no adjustment made and holding my Compaq 17" laptop perfectly. Pretty much the only keys I'll touch is the POWER and ESC button 99% of the time. I'm gaining confidence on this stand, giving it does swing a tiny bit when I type, mostly because of 1) it's on a thick carpet, 2) the laptop is consider heavy with 6.8lbs on top of the center post which is 39" long and most important 3) because I shorten 1 leg for my own requirement.

• Print out Julia's tripod design http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:423897, assemble the tripod to your need (height, angle... etc)
• Print out the 2 x STL file here, the pole mount fit right onto the top of the center post.
• cut out the appropriate size of material (in my case - wood) to hold your size of laptop
• mount the plate.stl to the material you cut out (do pay attention to the weight distribution of the laptop, mine was a 17" screen unit and with the screen open most of the time, the weight is lean towards the back for the laptop, thus I mount the plate slightly towards the back, check out the side view photo.)
• apply some caulking silicone around the mounting hole on the plate (you'll see some indent space made for that), this is meant for friction purposes and also use it as a semi glue effect. So I can tilt it or take it apart easily and not glue tight, yet gave me friction that the plate won't just drop.
• mount the plate on top of pole mount and tighten up the nuts and bolt, if I remember correctly the bolt should be 5/16 x 3".