Quantum Reality

I'm actually curious about something.

How do you determine load tolerances for desks? They aren't so critical now because LCDs weigh way less than CRTs do, but suppose you wanted to put a computer, printer, etc all on a table. Well, how do you know when the thing will break?

Also am curious because I have a very very vague idea of custom building a desk with a sort of "wind tunnel" cabinet (Air cooling! ) where a mobo would be along with attendant parts. Well, the acrylic to look down onto the mobo would weaken the top of the desk, but by how much? Knowing the load tolerance would help a lot.

Any info would be appreciated.

Deviance

Honestly, almost anything you build out of a reasonably solid material with some basic engineering and craftsmanship knowledge will be able to easily hold the weight of a tower + monitor + printer. Know your design, take your time, measure twice, cut once, you can never over use support brackets, and don't underestimate the power of triangulation.

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Unknownm

put on a big crt and if it holds it will hold everything on your list

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getbigtony

i stood on my desk and it's fine!

XFreeRollerX

the average desk can safely hold about 200 pounds of well distributed weight without a problem...

My plastic table held up a 70 pound tower for 6 months and bowed a little.. but thats 7 pound tower + my 24" monitor, two laptops and books

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Interpolation

The only way to determine a materials tensile strength is to do a stress test and measure the amount of pressure it takes to break it.

For example a 10x10 inch square of acrylic may take 150 pounds of direct pressure before fracturing. Divide this by ten and you would have 15 pounds per square inch.

Here is a index of some common materials and their established tensile strengths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile...sile_strengths

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Chilly

Wooden tables wouldn't have much problems supporting a computer and accessories, but a glass table however...

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Blameless

Stand on it for a few minutes. If you break the desk, get a stronger one.

Quantum Reality

Thanks. Also just realized the compressive strength would be at issue here, too, since the weight goes onto the legs of the table. I see the UTS of wood is ~40 MPa, which is 40 million newtons per square meter. That's around 5800 PSI, so any reasonable wood table will have no problem bearing the load under tensile conditions. If the UCS is considerably smaller that would be the factor I need to pay attention to.

Did some googling, the UCS is similar to the UTS for most wood species listed in the US government chart I saw. Now that being said the spec indicated these strengths were for parallel-to-grain conditions. So when (if) I build that wind tunnel desk I have in mind I will need to orient the legs so they go along the grain of the wood.

Materials science FTW