Last month my good friend Norrin gave me a Cintiq 13HD for my birthday, and by gosh is it a treat to work with. A Cintiq is something I’ve fantasized about owning since back when I was using a Graphire3 tablet in highschool and I can confirm that it absolutely lives up to my own personal hype.
Now that I have an expensive tool for professionals I can FINALLY become good at art. That’s how it works, right
Another thing I’ve always fantasized about was…having a bunch of computer monitors mounted to movable arms. I’M NOT REALLY SURE WHY I thought that was so cool, but it was at the top of my list of Super Cool Details About Where I’ll Live When I’m A Grownup.
Life Goals
Now that I’m A Grownup with a new monitor burning a hole in my desk, it’s definitely time to fulfill those weirdly-specific dreams. I started looking around for a good monitor mount and chose the Ergotron LX Desk Mount, which is a little pricey, but, screw it, we’re talking about childhood fantasies here, let’s go hog wild.
This image of a computer screen on a white background is exactly as hog wild as my life gets.
The Ergotron is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, which is a sturdy desk clamp mount that has a really wide range of motion. When drawing on it the Cintiq obviously needs to be low enough that I can reach it comfortably, and I like being able to move it into the air to reclaim desk space when I’m not using it. Securely fastening something above the desk is also a cool way to prevent my terrible cats from knocking it over or getting paw prints all over it, which are coincidentally their two favorite pastimes.
Like basically all monitor mounts, the Ergotron comes equipped with a VESA mounting interface, which is a standardized bracket for mounting flatscreens. Almost all TVs and PC monitors come with a VESA mount at this point, making it really easy to attach them to things.
And I’ve officially run out of synonyms for the word “mount”.
For whatever reason, though, the Cintiq 13HD doesn’t have a VESA mounting point — it doesn’t actually have any kind of mounting features at all, other than two parallel slots on the back so you can use the crappy little leaning stand it comes with, which feels really easy to knock over or collapse just by gently nudging it the wrong way.
A cat designed this.
Obviously, I’m not going to let a little thing like “the way the manufacturer intended me to use their product” to get in my way. This seemed like a weird design oversight, so I tried to see if the Internet Hivemind had developed an agreed-upon solution. Oliver Wetter of Ars Fantasio came up with a really cool idea: gut a tabletop easel and drill some dang holes in it. He’s even using an Ergotron arm too!
I like this idea not only because it’s functional but also because it’s using a “traditional” artist’s tool for a digital application. It’s like…whoa, man. Art???
I sashayed into my local Michael’s and bought the first tiny easel I could find that met the important critera, which was a back frame that would roughly fit the VESA bolt pattern. The only thing I could actually find was the Artist’s Loft Mini Display Easel, which I guess is Michael’s store brand. It was really cheap and you can absolutely tell why — as soon as I took it out of the box, a loose screw fell to the floor. Nice!
Roughly the exact opposite of nice!
Luckily I don’t give a heck about the moving parts besides the clamp slider, so I disassembled the rest. All that left was the back frame, the static lower jaw and the sliding upper jaw of the clamp. I sort of got cold feet about trusting a shoddy assembly of wood planks to securely support an Expensive Thing, but the connection between the lower jaw and the frame (two screws in the back) actually seems pretty solid. Good enough!
Everything on my desk is black so I’m sorry for the terrible contrast in the upcoming photos. Alternatively, we can just pretend it’s artsy.
The VISA MIS-D interface on the Ergotron has two square four-bolt patterns, one slightly larger than the other, so I figured there was a decent probability of the easel fitting one of them.
“This will probably work” is all the planning you ever really need.
So I slapped the easel against the Ergotron VESA mount to figure out where to drill the holes and was met with an inevitable fate: the easel frame was not the right size for either pattern of four screwholes. In fact, it was just the right width to fit exactly between them, which is hard to see in my picture but which I swear to you is true.
CURSE YOU, LAWS OF PROBABILITY
That means I could shift the frame slightly to the left or right and the two sidebars would line up with the large square pattern on one side and the small pattern on the other. That would make it slightly off-center, but whatever! Good enough!!
So I was getting ready to drill holes and was met with the inevitable fate next in line: since this easel had those stupid slidey legs, the frame has these big slots on both sides. These were directly underneath the only places it made sense to put the mounting holes.
CURSE YOU, ARTIST’S LOFT™-BRAND PRODUCTS
I definitely didn’t want to try drilling through those slots, because it would have probably caused the whole thing to splinter apart. So, gosh it to hell, I have a frame that’s exactly the wrong size enough to fit between my two mounting options, and there’s a big hole in the middle of the wood I need to mount to. What the heck!!
I was starting to feel like I’d have to find a different easel, and then one second later I was like “FRICK IT, PUT SOME ZIP-TIES ON THERE”
FRICKED
I suggest always keeping zip-ties around because they’re pretty good for quick-fixing stuff. They’re not the best solution for everything because they’re permanent enough that you have to destroy them to disassemble your fix, but not so permanent that I’d expect them to hold up to a lot of wear. They definitely have their uses, though, and this application actually seemed like one where they might work.
From the pack I had on-hand, each tie can handle up to 18 lbs of tension before breaking. The Cintiq 13HD weighs about 3 pounds, so four ties (one in each corner) should be plenty, even taking into account the fact that I’d be leaning on it while drawing.
The nice thing about using an easel is that it comes with those feet at the bottom — when I lower the arm to draw, those can rest on the desk and act to support it, almost like some kind of drawing easel or something. This keeps the Cintiq from moving when I lean on it, but it also takes a little bit of the force off the cable ties. Oliver Wetter up there suggests mounting an iPad stand or something similar to the bottom to give it some extra standing height, which could be useful depending on the height you like to draw at (or if you use a standing desk), but this works fine for me as-is.
Anyway, I still used eight ties (two in each corner) for redundancy’s sake. I know the zip-ties aren’t the best way to do it, so the least I can do is overdo it.
I realized upon taking this picture that I mounted the easel to the VESA bracket upside-down. I have a degree in mechanical engineering.
The frame slots actually ended up being the perfect length for this, and when everything was tightened I had a Cintiq-sized clamp that was nice and sturdy.
I didn’t want to just toss the Cintiq in there without any padding, however, and I loathe the idea of allowing anything as barbaric as unvarnished wood to touch it.
A few months ago I ordered some free samples of Sorbothane sheets for something at work. Sorbothane is a cool viscoelastic material that’s really good at absorbing shock and isolating from vibration, and it’s often used to shield electronics from those forces — I think they also make shoe insoles out of it. Unfortunately, it’s slightly too flammable to use in space, so I didn’t end up using it and had a bunch of scrap left over.
Waste not, et cetera.
It came in handy for this project — the stuff I had on-hand is low-durometer, so it’s pretty squishy. It’s also tacky, so I didn’t have to worry about it sliding around. I cut some strips to size so I had a layer on the top and bottom jaws, as well as some padding on the sidebars. The large strip in the image above has a weird little lip on it — that’s from the process they use to make it, and it’s usually waste material, but I used it here as padding between the edge of the Cintiq and the retaining ridge of the lower easel jaw.
Not shown is the piece that goes on the upper easel jaw, because gravity.
I think you can buy sheets of Sorbothane on Amazon, if you’re interested in trying it for something. The stuff in the picture is 0.080″ thick, but if I were buying new stock for this project in particular I’d want something thicker, like at least 0.250″.
This step is actually really important, because the easel only holds the Cintiq in one axis. If it’s not a tight fit, rotating the mount would cause the thing to fall out, which is a bad situation. The padding here increases static friction greatly, preventing it from sliding, and also allows you to increase the clamp force without having to worry about damaging the Cintiq.
You’ll note in the picture that I also put a couple dinky Command strips on the center bar of the frame. I don’t expect them to do much in the way of security; they’re really only there in an attempt to keep the Cintiq from shifting or wiggling when I’m putting pressure on it.
Anyway, all that’s left after that is to put the Cintiq in and tighten the clamp, and it’s done!
At the time of writing this, I’ve had this configuration set up for about a week and have used it to draw several times. The mount is super sturdy and doesn’t wobble at all; I’m a little wary of moving it by the tablet so I usually push it around by the easel legs and that’s easy enough. I might put a handlebar on there later if I feel like it but it definitely works as-is.
The Ergotron is definitely overkill as far as security goes, since its designed lifting capacity is 7-20 lbs. You may be wondering why there’s a minimum weight, but the whole thing is a spring-tension system. The weight of the load actually gets utilized when you adjust it, which is how you can move a heavy monitor up or down with the same amount of force. Even after adjusting all the springs to the lowest possible tension settings, I had a lot of trouble getting it to do what I wanted with such a tiny weight on it. Before I made any permanent attachments, I had to manually cycle the lift and tilt joints in particular to loosen them up. That’s a fancy way of saying I sat on the floor and painstakingly pivoted the hinges like a hundred times. The tilt joint in particular is super stubborn, and I ended up just getting it to the angle I wanted for drawing and leaving it that way. If I ever do add that handlebar, I might make sure it’s really heavy.
As far as a failure analysis goes, I think the two most likely points of failure are the lower easel jaw and the zip-ties. One nice thing about plastic zip-ties (especially black ones) is that it’s visually very apparent when they’re in bad shape. I’m going to be periodically checking up on the back panel to look for discoloration or stretching, because that signifies a lot of stress wear. If one unit is seeing a lot more wear than the others, I can replace it or strengthen that corner; if they all wear down really fast it might be necessary to rethink this system. Who knows, maybe they’ll last forever. The easel itself is a little harder to judge but that screw connection seems stable, particularly since it’s metal-on-wood in shear.
If I make another post next week with a picture of splintered planks and smashed Cintiq bits, I was wrong.
This was a pretty simple project and only took an afternoon to put it together. If you want to try it, I would not suggest this model of easel in particular — you can find better ones online in the $15-$25 range. You can get everything you need besides the arm itself for pretty cheap, too.
Let's Build a Thing! 