Acrylic Phone Stand

I had a few acrylic dividers laying around collecting dust so I decided to make a phone stand.

Acrylic dividers - If you don't have dividers, don't worry .. you can make this out of any appropriately sized pieces of acrylic. You will just have to add an extra step of making the cuts that allow the two pieces to intersect.

Pencil - for sketching your pattern onto the protective paper covering the acrylic

Coping Saw - cut acrylic can be difficult without the right tools. Remember that acrylic will tend to melt fairly easily so you don't want to create a lot of heat while cutting. A fine tooth blade will cut through the acrylic quickly without much risk of melting.

Clamps - clamp as close to the cuts as possible to avoid creating chatter in the acrylic while cutting and reduce the chance of cracking.

Scrap Wood - (optional) provides a solid base for clamping the acrylic to while working.

For making straight cuts in acrylic you can just score and snap the acrylic. (I found that fact out after I finished this project .. at least I know for next time)

For curve cuts a fine tooth coping saw lets you control the cut without generating much heat so it will not get gummed up from melted acrylic.

As far as I know there are not any Dremel attachments that will effectively cut acrylic. All of the cutting attachments I have for my Dremel end up making a melty mess.

I do not have a band saw, but I have read that because of the length of the blade there is very little heat buildup so these tend to do a good job of making clean cuts in acrylic.

For the preliminary cuts I had both pieces of acrylic faced the same way to trim off excess material.

After the basic shape is roughed out, It is important to remember to flip one of the pieces over BEFORE moving on to cutting out the arms of the phone stand, or else one of the arms will be inverted when the stand is put together.

Once the arms are cut out and the edges have been sanded smooth it is time to remove the protective paper from the acrylic and put the stand together.

Fitting the two parts of the stand together, the arms will hold the phone nicely in landscape mode.

Unfortunately The arms are a smidgen too wide to support the phone in portrait mode, but by flipping the stand over the back side of the stand will hold the phone upright nicely.

By not gluing the stand together, it comes apart easily and packs flat so it makes a nice travel accessory.