Laser-engraved Phone Stand

Here’s a simple laser-cut acrylic phone stand with public domain art engraved on it - you can make one just like this with the attached files or you can find your own art to engrave.

The pattern and the engraving should work just as well with 1/8" (3mm) plywood.

This pattern is made to use ⅛” (3mm) acrylic, but can be adjusted for other thicknesses. If your acrylic is a little too thick or too thin for this pattern, you can either scale the pattern in your laser software or adjust the individual slots in a program like Adobe Illustrator.

If you want to use the Hokusai ‘Great Wave’ artwork, download both the Illustrator file (or the PDF or the EPS) and the four JPEGs here. If you want to use a pattern from a Kuba cloth, download the Illustrator (or the PDF or the EPS) file here and get the images that are attached to Step 2.

If you want to use a pattern from a Kuba textile, use the attached images or find some of your own.

Here’s a search for Kuba on artsmia.org: https://collections.artsmia.org/search/kuba/filte...

And here’s Kuba textiles on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuba_textiles

Here are some other images that would work well for engraving on your acrylic: one is a black-and-white version of the full image of Hokusai’s Great Wave

(https://collections.artsmia.org/art/8747/under-the-wave-off-kanagawa-katsushika-hokusai)

and the others are Kuba textiles from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Here's a whole Instructable about finding public domain images to use:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Public-Domain-Imag...

Set up your images so you can engrave them onto the acrylic pieces. The images attached in Steps 1 and 2 are already cropped to be top, bottom, left and right panels. If you’re using your own images, format them for the individual pieces before you open them in your laser cutter software.

For more about optimizing your art for laser engraving, check out this Instructable:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Optimize-Your-Art-for-Laser-Engraving/

Set up the Illustrator (or EPS or PDF) pattern as your ‘cut’ layer in your laser software, and set up your images as your ‘engrave’ layer. Have the laser engrave first, and cut out the pieces second.

The inner slots in this pattern are if you'd like to place your phone on the stand in its vertical orientation.