How to Make a Steel Phone Stand.

Just as a quick note, I made this phone stand for my Iphone 7, and I have an otter box case on it. The Dimensions that I had used for the stand are for my phone, you might need to change some of the angles for where you weld, and the size of some of the pieces if you have a different phone then I do.

MIG welder

1/8inch by 3 inch steel strip

Angle grinder with grinding wheel

Metal chopsaw or cutting wheel for angle grinder

Angle magnets

Welding gloves

Welding mask

Wire wheel

Drill

Sand paper

Any color spray paint

Step 1: measure the steel.

When I was measuring my pieces cut 2 pieces that were 3.5 inches long. That will be for the bottom piece and a parallel piece that will hold the phone up. After that I measured a piece that was 3 inches long. This was the piece that the back of the phone would rest up against. Another piece that I will measure will be ¾ of an inch, this is what the bottom of the phone will be resting on. After this I measured 1 more piece that was ½ of an inch. This piece would be used as a lip so that the phone would not slip out of the phone holder. I used those dimensions for my iphone 7, and it has an otter box case. You might want to measure your phone, and take into consideration if it has a case or not. This Is because every phone is different, and you might need to tweek the dimensions a little to fit your specific phone.

The next thing that I will need to do is cut all of the pieces of metal. I used my metal cutting chop saw to do this task. When you do this you want to make sure you keep your pieces in order. When you are cutting it, you can use anything to cut the metal, and angle grinder with a cutting wheel, a hack saw, a plasma cutter, a cutting torch, the options are pretty much endless.

Step 3: grind/ clean the steel.

Now, you will want to use your angle grinder with a grinding wheel to grind off all of the paint and mill scale off of the paint. You will want to make sure all of the steel has no paint, rust, or mill scale on it, because if so, that will affect how strong the welds will become.

I like to use a magnet to make sure that all of the angles on the phone are good. This step is not very important. But when I did it I welded the bottom piece and the horizontal piece at a 35 degree angle, the phone bottom holder, and the backing piece were welded at a 90 degree angle.

Step 5: weld.

When I was welding I was using my Lincoln electric POWER MIG® 210 MP. I was using it on the mig welding setting, running it at around 60 amps, and the wire feed at around 200. When You weld, you don't have to use a mig welder like I did, you can use any welding process that you are comfortable with. First I started out welding the bottom with the horizontal piece, after that I would weld the phone backing piece to the horizontal piece. After that I would weld the piece that the phone would rest on to the backing part, and I welded another lip piece onto where the phone would rest.

When I was done with welding, I used a wire wheel on the end of my drill, and I said it to clean off the welds that I made. If You wanted to you can take your grinder with the grinding wheel and you can grind down the welds you made. I did not end up doing that because I thought that the weld beads made it look a little bit cooler. Once you are done with cleaning and grinding the welds down, you can go ahead and sand it. After you get done sanding it, you are ready to paint. I used black spray paint because that is the color that we had, and I thought that it would look good.