Quick ways to reinforce cheap wood-like IKEA table?

Question

The weight of the 3 monitors on my 3-monitor arm has destroyed my IKEA table (not real wood). See picture.

I want to still use the same monitor arm with 3 monitors in the same area, where the damage is... How can I reinforce that area that has the hole? Can I use a metal sheet or something? Any other ideas?

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UPDATE: As recommended in the answers to this question, I added two plexiglass plates (one above the table and another one below it). Size: 15 x 20 cm x 5 mm = 7.87in x 5.9in x 0.19in. 5EUR each.

It has been working great. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Answer 1

I'll assume the arm's clamp is big enough to add a 3/4 inch piece of wood above and below the table.

Go to the hardware store and get an off-cut of wood about 3 inches wide and a foot long. This can be 3/4 inch plywood or board or even a foot-long offcut of 2x4 that you saw in half along its thickness. Whatever. You want to end up with two pieces of wood, for free, each 3/4 inch thick and 6x3 inches.

Sandwich the table with the wood, above and below. Glue the wood to the table. If the table is chipboard, also screw it with appropriate screws. If it's a cardboard sandwich just glue it ... but maybe go longer than 6 inches.

Clamp the arm to the wood sandwich.

The glue (and screws) are to prevent the pieces of wood from sliding off when the monitors are moved. The clamp by itself will have rubber pads for that purpose. With the added wood pieces, and without fastening them, the arm could end up sliding its way off the table.

Answer 2

Clamps like that aren't for cheap IKEA desks

Ikea desks look solid, but actually they are two layers of thin veener with a cardboard honeycomb material between them. It looks like this or this.

That's cardboard. It's just not made to resist compression. It is made to resist shear, because it's glued top and bottom. Or is supposed to be... QA varies obviously. When Ikea wants to give you a hard-point for a clamp or mounting, they fill that space with chipboard like the corner there.

All the cantilever load of the monitors rests on the toe of that clamp, where it is putting hundreds of kilograms of force down on the assumption that desk is solid. But there's no "there" there. Nothing for the clamp to actually clamp to.

The only way to make this work is to have a large topside spreader that spreads the load across enough of the desk to engage a whole bunch of those cardboard honeycombs. Even if most of the compressive capacity in that area wasn't already wrecked, More like ... 12x24"? And the stiffener needs to be actually stiff over that distance, does not good if it simply creates another compression hotspot. It would be bonkers.

Nothing against Ikea but their desks are not for this. I recommend not wasting lipstick on a pig and get a solid desk.