Homemade Monitor and Keyboard Tray

For my home server rack, I wanted to build a Monitor and Keyboard tray that I could easily use and put away when needed. First I looked online for a professional Monitor Tray and keyboard, these would fit perfectly in the server cabinet. However with the professional built monitor trays, comes a professional price. The cheapest I could find was roughly $500!! Yikes! Another issue I ran into is because my home made rack is technically only a 2-post rack, most of the monitor trays require installation on a 4 post rack. With this in mind I walked downstairs into my garage to look for scrap pieces of wood. I had a bunch of 2x4s that were already cut less than foot and some extra plywood. After some brainstorming with the material I had and would get from Home Depot, I had a rough sketch of how to build this tray.

Monitor & Keyboard Tray Sketch

Here is the sketch I drew for the Monitor & Keyboard tray. Notice it is not a pull out tray like this one, rather a articulating arm which allows me to tuck it under the server rack and not use up rack space.

Homemade Server Rack

Here is a picture of my home-made server rack, which hangs from the 1st floor’s floor joists.

Construction

Monitor Plate

First I started with constructing the monitor plate. Measure on the back of the monitor where the mounting nuts were.
Main Brackets and Hinges

Next was to construct the main framing brackets and hinges that would attach to the server rack. After cutting the already short 2x4s to the correct length, see sketch above, I mounted them together with T-Brackets, here, and Hinges, here.
Constructing the Keyboard Tray

Constructing the keyboard tray consisted of two long cuts of plywood held together with two Shelf Brackets, here.
Pre-mounting

A quick look at the Monitor & Keyboard Tray before mounting it to the server rack.
Mounting to Server Rack

Screw and anchor in each of the two hinges.
Finished Product