Charachorder2 Vertical Stand

Overview

The is a stand for holding a Charachorder 2 keyboard in a vertical orientation on either side of a laptop or conventional keyboard. It is similar in function to a "tenting" style keyboard stand, but without the ability to change the roll angle like a typical tenting stand. It does provide the ability to rotate along the vertical axis as a way of adjusting the angle of your wrist.

The philosophy behind this design follows...

Use Case

I use an open 14" laptop computer with an external monitor above and behind it as my daily professional and personal workstation. The two halves of the CC2 are positioned to either side of the laptop. This configuration gives me the benefit of using the touchpad on the laptop as my preferred pointing device, the extra screen on the laptop, and quick and easy access to the laptop keyboard for those situations when the CC2 is not the optimal input device (mostly because I am not yet fully proficient on it for maximum typing speed and some infrequently used obscure key combinations).

As part of my workstation setup, I use a desk chair with arms and an adjustable height desk (a motorized standing desk) and I adjust everything so that my forearms are on the armrests and my hands land naturally and comfortably on the CC2 keys.

Ergonomic Goals

I have used tenting keyboard solutions in the past and originally set out to make this design have an adjustable roll (tenting) angle, but realized that my ideal angle was about 80 degrees, so decided to simplify the design (see the Acknowledgements section below for why it was important to do that) by just making it fixed at 90 degrees vertically.

An important factor in keyboard ergonomics is wrist angle , so I incorporated the ability to rotate the CC2 along the Z-axis, which effectively changes the angle of the wrist.

Stability and Laptop Impact

The base of the stand is designed to slip underneath the forward edge of the laptop. The laptop serves to hold the stand pinned beneath it, which helps prevent it from rocking or moving. This does cause the laptop to be tipped back very slightly, but not enough to affect its use or stability. Rather than a laptop, this stand could also be positioned under a standard flat keyboard.

I applied some thin non-slip rug pad material to the bottom of the stand (with 3M 2-sided tape) to keep the stand from sliding around on the desk surface. 

Fasteners

The vertical mounts are held to the base using a 1/4 by 3/4” hex bolt. I used a socket wrench to tighten it, as there was not quite enough clearance to use a crescent wrench.

For fastening the CC2 halves to their respective vertical mounts, I used 1/2” long socket head cap screws threaded for a standard camera mount. This makes it easy to adjust the forward-back rotational orientation of the CC2 and tighten it down with your fingers. Don’t use any longer than that or you risk damaging your CC2.

Wiring

Because the USB-C connector on the left CC2 half will point downward when mounted to the stand there may not be enough clearance to prevent it from hitting the desktop. Rather than use the USB cable that came with the CC2, I got one with an angled USB-C connector.

For the wire connecting the right CC2 half to the left one, I used a standard 3-conductor, 36” long 3.5mm audio cable. It is long enough to run behind the laptop where it stays out of the way and leaves me with clear access to the laptop keyboard and touchpad. It would also be possible to run it underneath the front edge of the laptop, since the stand’s base creates a space for it. 

Possible Modifications

To use this stand freestanding without a laptop or keyboard pinning it down, the simplest solution would be to place a book or piece of wood on top of the tongues of the stand base. If you wanted to get a little fancier, you could modify the base design, creating a single base piece with attachment points for both left and right vertical mounts, or perhaps devise a way to connect the separate bases together. You would probably also want to add some extensions to the base pointing forward and back so that the stand does not tip in those directions.

To accommodate a wing nut or crescent wrench on the bolt that holds the vertical mount to the base, the arms of the mount would have to have their geometry changed a bit.

Acknowledgements

While I watched over his shoulder and provided the basic specifications and requirements, credit for the actual resulting model goes to my son-in-law who actually knows how to do CAD (I don’t) and owns 3D printers (I don’t) and is a mechanical engineer (I’m not). We had limited time to get this project done while I was visiting from out of town for only a few days, and he was gracious enough to give a generous amount of his precious free time to get this stand designed and built. Any imperfections or attributes begging for improvement are the result of our limited time together and my reluctance to abuse his generosity with more revisions and further tweaking, and should not be considered a reflection of his workmanship.