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I got the 59" x 30" linnmon black/brown top for my new computer desk (apparently it's made of particleboard and filled with paper). I also bought one of those fancy ergonomic metal arm keyboard trays (humanscale 6G).

Well, the keyboard tray arm thing weighs about 20lbs, and I'm pretty sure if I attempt to screw it into the linnmon, even with mounting tape for extra support, it will fall out.

I'm not really handy and am wondering what I should do here? Would it be a good idea to buy a 1-4"-3/4" piece of relatively hard wood, wood glue/epoxy it to the table, and then screw the tray into that instead? Is there glue out there strong enough to hold wood to a particleboard desk to support upwards of 10-20lbs?

Here is the actual specs on how to mount the tray so you can see what it looks like: https://www.humanscale.com/userfiles/file/Keyboard_instructions_011216.pdf

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  • So I cannot speak to the power of your press board, but you could try to mount it in an non obtrusive position to weight test it OR you could mount it to a piece of plywood then use a number of screws to distribute the load over the underside of the wood desk surface – noybman Sep 15 '17 at 4:04
  • Did you try it and did it work? I'm trying to do something very similar. – user80510 Jan 17 '18 at 23:01
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The screws may or may not hold in pressboard. It depends a lot on the density of the pressboard and the screws. There are screws that are designed for pressboard, (Typically a more course thread, but they certainly don't guarantee success. I think noybman had a good comment that you should test the material in an inconspicuous spot.

The problem with epoxying wood to the pressboard is that the outer layer of the pressboard is usually some type of laminate that is glued to the pressboard and is designed to provide the aesthetic appearance only and not designed to hold any weight. To put it another way, imagine placing a piece of packing tape onto a piece of wood and then epoxying a weight to the tape - you are relying on the tape.

You may be able to use a number of screws to attach a piece of plywood to the bottom of the desk. I would suggest using a piece of plywood that is 3-4 times larger than the mounting surface of the keyboard slide to distribute the weight. You could reinforce it with epoxy but that would be just extra reinforcement, the screws should be doing the work.

The best way to support the tray is to use bugle head bolts drilled through the desk top. They would need to be countersunk to be flush on the surface of the desk. This may be the strongest way, but it is the ugliest and I probably wouldn't do it if it were my desk.

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The small (1.2m) Linnmon is not made of particle board except on two of it sides; see this teardown. The large area in between is mostly air with a honeycomb paper structure covered by thin (pressboard?) veneers. The larger (2m) one seems to also have a particleboard beam in the middle. I doubt you can screw much weight to the thin veneers; you could try with drywall anchors. If you can screw into the middle particleboard beam (assuming you have that variant), it will probably be ok. If not, you'll want to leverage the surface of Linnmon... which means either:

  • drilling through both faces of the Linnmon and inserting bolts with large washers on the topside (ugly)
  • using some kind of glue; epoxy or CA (superglue)... it doesn't matter too much; you're betting that the surface finish is well glued to the board... which it may or may not be. You can test on a small area by gluing a hook base and hanging some known weight(s) from it; upload your test to youtube for epic sharing of your findings. I couldn't find out on the interwebz how resistant the surface of the Linnmon might be.
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