3D Print Phone Stand

In this project I used Fusion 360 generative design tool to create a phone stand model and 3D print it.

My purpose is to design a phone stand that elevates my phone away from the desktop to make FaceTime with my families and friends easier.

I hold and move my cellphone around to find the best position for doing FaceTime, keep it unmoved and took some measurements.

- The bottom of the phone is 106mm away from the desktop.

- The tilt-angle is measured indirectly by taking the two edges of of the triangle, which is 38.5mm and 11.5mm.

- The phone is 145mm long

- From the top of the tilted phone to the bottom is 138.87mm (calculated).

There are two forces applied to the stand on the two surfaces the phone in contact with.

The phone is roughly 200g. I added 25N force perpendicular to back of the phone, and 15N Force perpendicular to the bottom of the phone. The base is constrained to be fixed.

Setting the target reduction ratio to 30% caused a failure to make a legitimate stand: the holder part was not connected to the base.

After changing it to 50% I got the first legitimate reduced model.

My goal in this optimization was to reduce as much material as possible without breaking the connection between the holder and the base. This is the best I can do.

The exported model is slightly beyond the printing limit, I also don't have that much material at hand. So I printed a 50% model.

Later, I found laying the model down and align the longest edge along with the diagonal of the bottom area actually enabled faster print speed and larger print size.

The model had been printed pretty well without any support, until the 99% of the progress!

The extruder somehow did not elevate higher enough and hit the model heavily. The model was broken into two pieces for the thinest connection joint in the middle of the column... I think this can be improved by adding forces from the size in the topology optimization.

Luckily, I managed to glue the model together.

The model was designed for to support my iPhone 11 Pro in portrait direction. Due to the reduction on print size, I tested with a smaller and lighter IPhone 5s, and it worked pretty well on both portrait and landscape direction. I tested with my bigger iPhone 11 Pro and it works also, but not as stably as it hold the iPhone 5s. With the hold, both phones have the perfect perspective during FaceTime (or selfie).