-->DIY adjustable projector stand

DIY adjustable projector stand<br>3 min read Jul 25, 2026

At home, we use a projector and a roll-down screen instead of a television. We<br>don’t want to add a big black rectangle to our otherwise bright and airy living<br>room. Whenever we want to use the projector, we roll down the screen and place<br>the projector on our flat file cabinet, which doubles as a coffee table.

To make sure the projector lines up just right, we usually place some books or<br>magazines underneath to prop it up. Recently, we’ve been using the projector<br>quite a lot more, especially while watching this year’s World Cup, and the<br>propping-up routine started to bother me since it’s not very repeatable and,<br>frankly, quite ugly.

So I decided to do a quick little project with my children, which ended up<br>taking less than 30 minutes once we had all the parts. First, I went out to the<br>garage to see what I had. I’ve done several projects at this point and have a<br>little pile of leftover scrap wood — one of these was a piece of plywood left<br>over from the modular bookcase I made<br>years ago, and that piece was luckily just a bit wider and longer than the<br>projector, making it suitable for this project.

I wanted adjustability so that once the projector was sat down, we could get it<br>perfectly orthogonal to the plane formed by the projector screen. For this, I<br>needed to be able to adjust at three different points, so I opted to put a screw<br>centered in the back and then two on each of the front corners.

To achieve this, I needed only a few parts costing around $10.

First were a set of<br>screw-in insert nuts<br>— also called threaded inserts. To install these, I drilled a hole just big<br>enough for the smaller end of the nut to fit in, then drove the nut in with a<br>hex wrench. Then I screwed in some<br>machine screws,<br>matching both in size and thread count to the insert nut.

Finally, to protect our table, we added some<br>rubber thread protectors.<br>Those were a little too big, so we dropped a tiny bit of hot glue in before<br>sticking them onto the ends of the screws.

Once all the parts were put together, I tested it with the projector, and it<br>worked marvelously. When adjusting the projector, I first make sure the left and<br>right sides of the image are parallel to the projection screen, and then I<br>adjust the front two screws to match the top edge. Within a minute or two, we’re<br>able to get the projector filling the entire screen without much fuss.

Right now the stand is plain wood, but I plan to rub in some<br>Danish oil that I’ve used in other<br>projects. This would add a natural stain-resistant coating to keep the wood<br>looking good.

Camera setup

p+p]:mt-16 grid grid-cols-2 gap-24">Camera<br>Leica CL

Macro lens<br>Leica APO-Macro-Elmarit-TL 60 f/2.8

Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.