My desk wasn’t very big and was being used by my computer, so I decided to make another desk. However, putting a desk where I wanted it would block part of my closet and stick out into the middle of the room where I might stub my toes. So I built a desk that can be winched up to the ceiling and doesn’t have any legs that make marks in the carpet or on my poor toes.
Glued some rounded trim on the sides of the 2’x4’ piece of plywood and painted it with around 4 layers of pickling stain. The pickling stain made the wood white while still leaving the wood grain visible. Then sprayed it with several coats of pre-catalyzed lacquer.
3D printing the hub I designed for the winch. It has four keyhole slots for the steel cables and the crimped on end-stops to lock into. It also has holes for screws running vertically. Printed with PLA plastic.
The finished winch with brass bushings. The sides are made out of plywood.
The winch base mounted on the ceiling along with a simple latch that hooks into holes in the winch.
The mounts for the pulleys screwed onto the ceiling. They are screwed into the rafters.
The pulley sheaves that came with these pulleys were 1" diameter which is smaller than what the manufacturer recommended for the cables. I made some 2" diameter sheaves on my 3D printer. I used PLA plastic and it seems to be more than strong enough.
Connecting the cables after cutting them. To get the length of each cable just right I set up the system with string and cut the cable to the same length as each string.
The end of the cables that are bolted into the desk.
All wired up.
To keep the desk from swinging, it sits on two pegs (one not pictured) in this board that is mounted inside my closet. It slides up and down on t-slot aluminum rails. This way I can adjust the height of the desk and the height of this stabilizer, and even remove the stabilizer. Note the 3d printed wingnuts.
All done! Here is the desk raised up.