Slightly OT: Tilt and turn TV brackets

[Roger Mills]

[It may not be OT if I end up making one!]

SWMBO wants a 26" flat panel TV in her new kitchen - mounted high on the wall, and able to be tilted and turned so that she can watch it from one position when standing preparing food, or from another position when sitting down.

There are plenty of tilt and turn brackets on the market, which claim to be able to support the necessary size and weight - a typical example being the one which Maplin currently has on offer for £25. See

this - and other similar ones - look as if turning the TV to face a different direction would not be a problem, they all look as if adjustment of the tilt would require using a spanner, and wouldn't be something you'd want to do too often. Any comments as to whether or not I'm right? [SWMBO fondly imagines that she will be able simply to grab the TV and tilt it to different angle.]

It seems to me that - since the set will be mounted by means of its VESA mount at the back, all the weight will be *forward* of the tilt pivot - so you can't allow it to pivot freely without bolting it up tightly. Perhaps what is needed is a bracket which bolts to the VESA mounts and then extends sideways both ways and then forward round the sides of the set, with a pivot each side such that the line joining these two pivots passes through the C of G of the set. Has anyone ever seen (or made) such a device.

Alternatively, maybe someone has designed some sort of linkage which provides a virtual pivot point inside the set without physically having to extend round the sides?

Any constructive comments welcome!

[Jim]

It gets more expensive unfortunately if you want more degrees of freedom.

There was a company called Premier Mounts doing this kind of stuff at the NEC Homebuilding Show a couple of months ago:

[NoSpam]

I looked into this a while ago and after a few experiments decided that tilt/swivel seems like a good idea but it isn't needed, it also makes the mount much less robust and further from the wall. I made a mount with 4 pieces of angle. It took about an hour, looks pretty good (if you look for it, otherwise it's invisible), is solid, the TV is as close to the wall as it's possible to get, and a tea-leaf would need some special tools to be able to take it off the mount.

[Dave Osborne]

For cheaper brackets (and indeed heavy-duty brackets) , tilt and turn generally means that you preset the tilt angle (with a spanner or allen key or wing knob or whatever) and then you can swing at will.

However for light and medium weight stuff, you can get fully adjustable e.g.

more generally:

[Steven Campbell]

My parents fitted something similar into there kitchen although it was for a slightly smaller TV. It works just fine by basically grabbing and moving it to wherever you want it to go. The diagram you linked to shows in section 4 a hand turned knob that you tighten until there is just enough friction to be able to tilt the TV and for it not to return to its natural position. It works just fine.

[Steven Campbell]

Never noticed the spanner next to what looks like a hand turned knob!!!! Obviously this design is different. But the principle would just be the same. If it is tightened just enough to hold the friction, you would soon know if the nut had come slack and you could retighten it. My parents found out though that once in a certain position, the TV no longer had to be moved from side to side or up and down.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Most also of this type don't allow the angle to be changed by much.

I've just done the same thing - but with a 24" screen. It was sitting on a 'breakfast bar' dividing the kitchen and eating areas. So needed to swivel through more than 90 degrees - being LCD crap - to get a decent viewing angle in both kitchen and dining area.

I used this:-

but since it was only just long enough to reach slightly beyond the side of the TV had to use steel reinforcement to spread the load into the side of the chimney breast.

[Roger Mills]

Many thanks for those links - and thanks to all others who have replied, too.

The AVF/Nexus LCD503 (or maybe the slightly larger LCD554) looks like it/they will do the job - having a tilt mechanism which effectively projects the tilt axis to pass through the C of G of the set. They're somewhat(!) more expensive than the Maplin offering which I cited - but it's probably a price worth paying to keep SWMBO happy!