[blackfury]

I am a college student at Texas A & M, I live in a 2 bedroom apartment and I am trying to work my projector into my bedroom. Bedroom is 16' x 12'(maybe slightly less wide) with 8' ceilings. I want to have the projector in the middle of the room as far back as possible(over the head of the bed).


The obvious solution would be to ceiling mount it but I don't know for sure how long I will be in the apartment(anywhere from 1-3 years). I've thought about it a while and the best solution I can come up with is to build a simple stand, under 8' high and mount a ceiling mount to the stand. The stand will have long enough legs to adequately support the projector and the vertical supports will protrude outward from the wall as little as possible.


I'm wanting to know others opinions as to whether or not this is a good idea in the first place, and if it is a good idea I would like to know the best way to approach this. I am unsure of what materials I will use and various design details. My friends brother owns a machine shop less than an hour away so he could help with the fabrication. Attached is a rough layout of the stand.
http://www.mustangmods.com/data/691/projector2.jpg

 

[RobertV]

You know the ceiling mounts are secured with four bolts (in most cases.) If you were to find the ceiling joists, you would only need to patch four holes when leave.

The stand sounds like a decent amount of work compared to a ceiling mount.

If the stand is out of steel, you may be able to get away with that type of stand, but in wood I would rotate the stand 90 deg. on both the vertical and horizontal planes. So you would frame it just like a house. I would use atleast 2x8s for the upper, 2x4 for the vertical, and 2x4 for the lower. As in you would have a rectangle when you were done, the 2x8 would be correctly spaced to line up with the mounts on the Ehome, and you would have 2x4s connecting/bracing the whole unit. It would be easy to attach 2x4s that would run out towards the foot of the bed on the floor that would help make it less prone to tipping.

Another thought is to have the stand be the same height as the center of the screen, this would allow for very little electronic corrections and I do not think that you would hit you head on it.

Just my .02 cents.

 

[blackfury]

The stand would most likely be constructed out of steel. Shouldn't be too much work to do the stand, mainly design work, the welding shop would do the work(friend's brother). I'm not sure how high I want it to be, I guess I'd need about 3 ft above the top of the mattress, which is about 26" above the floor. I also haven't calculated how low the projector will hang below the top of the stand, guess I won't know for sure until I mount it because I don't even know the angle of tilt.


The main thing I'm trying to ask is if this project is worth attempting? Has anyone done anything similar?