3D printing – it’s the future (well it’s actually now). Besides all the pointless novelty items you print when you first get a 3d printer – a hand(?), glasses holder, magic table and the like – there are some things that actually do something worthwhile. And if there aren’t, design it yourself.

So I did. Using Tinkercad (it’s free).

I’d printed some phone stands and was wondering how I could make my own version. I designed a bracket for my phone to sit above my laptop screen. It was OK, but not actually needed – the phone works fine laid on the desk at the side of the laptop. From there though, came my idea – dual screen my laptop.

Quick search and found there’s a dual screen kit on Kickstarter for £200 or so (granted, it includes the screen). But I’ve made a better and much cheaper alternative –

A pair of brackets, mirrored for left and right. These slide on to the top of the screen, with my tablet sliding into them. I’ve made them with a slight angle, 11 degrees, which seems to be enough.

Now I can dual screen wherever I’m at. Coding is so much easier with two screens and trading would be fun too, if I did any, but you get the picture, literally.

The set up is a Dell laptop and Lynx tablet, both running Windows 10. The laptop won’t project the screen for some reason, maybe it’s too old, so I’m using Spacedesk software (it’s free at the moment). The mouse was a bit jittery on the tablet with them both connected to my home wifi, so I hotspotted my tablet and connected the laptop to that. Now almost perfect mouse and drag/drop action, wonderful. Now back to coding…