Why are these things so damn expensive? Looks like they are fleecing money ( or it appears so for my cheapskate sensibilities ). Someone should start a kick-starter project to make good ones for a reasonable price.
How much do you think a sturdy steel frame with reasonably precise synchronized lifting motors with a combined capacity of over 300lbs designed to put up with years of use and abuse should cost?
What is a reasonable guess here..hmmm. I have no idea about how much these motors would cost but I am assuming given the number of office chairs (which move up and down with a lever) we produce, they shouldn't be costing a lot. We get good office chairs which support up to 300 lbs for under $100. I am assuming the technology for moving tables should be similarly priced. A sturdy steel frame + planks (wood/composite) + up/down motor/hydraulic lift shouldn't cost more than $300 in my subjective opinion. I am not willing to pay more than that. Wonder how much would IKEA charge for these, if they made one (edited for typos).
The >300lbs on a GeekDesk Max isn't how much it can support, it's how much it can lift. Your office chair can't lift 300lbs. It can't lift much at all. I also don't believe in the ability of a pair of $300 hydraulic lifts to consistently reproduce my presets.
As someone who weighs close to 300lbs, I can also tell you you won't find a good office chair rated for 300lbs for under $100. Go look at the specs on office chairs closely. Most of them will be rated for less than 250lbs with no more than a few hours/day of use.
If you want your own crappy top (planks? really?), the actual cost of a GeekDesk Max is $725-745. The non-max (275lbs lifting capacity) is $525-549. You want a vastly inferior product to save $225?
I got a geek desk, the original. Put my own top of plywood on it finished. I've got 3 24" flatscreens and abunch of other crap. I'm still not even near the lifting capacity. But I think of the higher end desk as a good idea for a quieter motor, not so much the need for more weight. With that said, I think a hand crank desk should be fine for most of us. If only I could find one that's reasonably cheaper. The hand crank desks I've seen basically cost the same as the geekdesk though, which I don't understand at all.
50lbs desk surface, 3x ~15lbs LCDs, 5.6lbs laptop, ~15lbs desktop, other electronics, lamps, some books, papers, stands, containers with misc parts and things, whatever else I might be working on.
It's a 6.5' x 2.6' foot surface, it holds a lot more than a laptop.
One problem I see with the chair-piston approach is that if you don't get each leg moving up or down at the same rate then you might get a jam. This could probably be overcome if it is indeed an issue at all, but probably worth considering.
Apologies for shooting from the hip. Never meant to say I can come up with a better design than mechanical engineers. You seem to suggest that building this table requires some serious engineering chops. May be there is some truth to it. As a layman ( in mechanical engineering ) I find it extremely hard to believe that technology for synchronized hydraulic lifts is not commoditized yet.
It just feels like these ergonomic goods producing companies are selling chairs/tables with super high markups ($900-$1500) for ergo chairs - really?). Seems like you have a better handle on the production costs of a hight-adjustable table. How much does it really cost?
FWIW, we certainly can make synchronized tandem lifts, but as always it comes down to costs. Basically if you want both actuators to move in unison, you either need to directly link them mechanically, which is expensive to build/repair, and not very feasible over large distances, or you need to connect them electrically via their control signals.
In the latter case, you would usually synchronize their controller clocks, and specify the motors/cylinders/whatever to both have a very tight positioning tolerance. Then you mount the surface being moved on a system of bearings that have enough freedom s.t. it will self center automatically, absorbing the tiny bit of misalignment that can (and WILL) occur.
However, in my experience it's almost always better to use two passive, i.e. non-lifting, supports along with one actuator in the middle that is twice as powerful. In heavy lift applications it often comes down to getting a single cylinder that is powerful enough without blowing the cost through the roof. Nevertheless, if you look at marine architecture, airport gangways, earth moving machinery etc. you will often see just a single lifting point.
And in three paragraphs we've gone from office chair pistons to front-end loaders! Yay HN! As I said... for what it's worth ;-)
They probably make about 20-30% profit on each one dependent on the company.
Making shit is expensive unless you're doing it at scale, the majority of people don't care about adjustable desks so the marketshare is by nature a niche. You then have staffing costs, design costs, distribution costs.
I think if you want to do it cheap, then a handcrank, 4 rubber belt drives, and 4 screw legs would be the way to go. The problem would be making it look acceptable (either hide the mechanism, or display it prominently and make it look nice.
That table has 40% the surface area of my desk, and a static weight limit of 176lbs. I'd have to buy two for $300, still wouldn't have the same surface area, then I'd have to put it on something else because its maximum height is 32 inches (mine's over 43 when I'm standing). And, of course, the non-adjustability is a complete deal-breaker.
Over 5 years, a $1000 desk is about $0.55/day. It's strange to me how many people think it's outrageous for such a critical tool to cost that much.
Why should it be made of wood? Any composite material will do. We just need to build one which is affordable. It looks like a niche product right now, and a whole lot of average americans cannot afford to purchase one. It looks like one of those things we have to pay a premium to own. You get sturdy and durable hydraulic barber chairs between $100-$150. A table with the same kind of lift mechanism should cost you ~$750 to own?
"Why should it be made of wood? Any composite material will do."
To be clear, the IKEA table is probably made of a composite wood, not a proper slab of wood, but I agree with your point. Material cost should not dominate the price of a desk.
To be honest though, I think the value of a motorized desk is being overblown. I have just put my desk up on 4 stacks of office paper in the past; worked great. Everyone needs new expensive toys though...
That's what you say to suckers with your arm around their shoulders. I hope you don't mention that philosophy before you get the quote, because people are willing to sell you shit at any price.
Steel is >$0.60 per kilogram when purchased by the tonne. I believe the GeekDesk frames weigh over 100kg. So that's $60 just for the raw steel before it's been turned into anything useful or adding the motors and electronics.
I invite you to try to just break even selling adjustable 100kg steel desks to end-users at $150 each.
The nichier the market, the more price has to go up to compensate. I also doubt there's much competition in the field, other than DIY or not using a convertible desk at all.
There are actually more options for height adjustable desks than you might imagine. I wrote up a post a while back that listed 7, but commenters have since added quite a few more.
It's not quite that simple because the high prices force the market to remain niche. It may be that the market could become surprisingly large if an affordable commodity version of this were available.
If you saw a day in my life, "hyper-sloth" would more likely be your term for me. "hyper-optimizer" isn't even on the list of possible descriptions. And I use an adjustable standing desk.
And no, ergonomic suicide is not an alternative to a proper desk with external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
There are other options. Why a huge desk in the first place? The Jesper Workpad [1] is just $299 on Amazon [2] -- a minimalistic laptop desk with a minimal footprint and clean aesthetic. It's not motorized, but it doesn't need to be.
I don't know about you, but I commonly have a lot more stuff on my desk than would fit on that thing. I don't work with keyboard+mouse+monitor, but even with just that it would be cramped. Maybe if you just use a laptop.
I got a ModTable (multitable.com), which is a bit more cost effective. Bought it through Amazon. You can buy just the hardware, and supply your own top if you want too (ikea sells some).
It isn't automatic (has a hand crank), but it works great!
I don't run it up and down all day, and taking a minute to crank the handle (which is removable) when I want to change positions, is not onerous.
I don't see why you couldn't leave the handle off (you insert the large allen wrench thing into the handle as part of assembly) and use a large-capacity bit grip, and a drill.
