Why does nobody talk about how standing desks slowly loosen over time?

I bought this cheap motorized standing desk off Amazon about 14 months ago. Last Tuesday I went to raise it and the whole top wobbled like crazy before a screw fell out and hit my bare foot. Took me 3 hours to disassemble, find the right size bolt at Ace Hardware, and reassemble everything. What do you guys use to keep your hardware tight on budget desks? I'm thinking of just switching to a fixed table with a monitor arm instead.

3 comments

3 Comments

nancyramirez6d ago

Yeah I had basically the same thing happen with my cheap desk. @the_rowan mentioning those bolts working loose is exactly what got me. I found that none of the screws shipped with mine had any thread locker on them at all. So after I retightened everything I put a drop of blue Loctite on every single bolt. Been 6 months now and not a single one has budged. Also switched to a small manual crank instead of the motor cause I got nervous the mechanism was gonna fail too. Works fine but I keep my tools in the bottom drawer now just in case.

the_rowan6d ago

A screw fell out and hit your bare foot? That's wild, I've never heard of that happening to anyone. I've got one of those cheap motorized ones too, the kind that was like 300 bucks on Amazon. I noticed last month the whole top panel started sliding back and forth like 2 inches when I bumped it, and I found out four of the bolts holding the frame together were almost completely loose. I just tightened everything down with a socket wrench and it's been fine but I keep a little tool kit right next to the desk now.

william_craig76d ago

I'm wondering though, did you check if those loose bolts were actually the right size for the holes? I had a friend who tightened everything down on his cheap desk and a month later the threads just stripped out because the bolts were too short. He ended up having to drill new holes and put in bigger hardware, which was a pain.