Make Your Mobile Phone Retro (Tinkercad)

This instructable will guide you through a fun project to turn your mobile phone into an old fashioned retro ‘brick’ phone using 3D printing. The case can also be used as a phone stand.

Computer or Tablet

3D Printer

Filament

We need to choose a phone to loosely base our phone case on so have a search on the internet and find a picture you would like to use. I have chosen this 1970s house phone.

We are going to create a cover or case that your mobile phone can slot into so go ahead and measure your own phone adding a couple of millimetres in each direction - this allows for any printing inconsistencies that may otherwise make your phone a tight fit.

We’re also going to create some holes in the model so that you can press your number pad keys when it is in the case so open up your number-pad on your phone. Take measurements of the size of your number-pad and where it sits on your phone. Mine measures 40x50mm and sits in the centre of the screen.

Now let’s go into Tinkercad to design your case.

The design will consist of a front and a back piece, lets do the front first.

Open Tinkercad and add a cube. Make it 4mm tall and slightly larger than your numberpad measurements. Use ‘hole cubes to create a grid of nine holes where your numbers would be.

Now, have a look through the shapes available on Tinkercad (there are very many). Find the ones that are best suited to create your mouthpiece and earpiece. I used a ‘wedge’ for the mouthpiece and a ‘soft box’ for the earpiece but you can experiment with other shapes until you are happy.

Scale the shapes up to fit the numberpad and case front – remember that the front and back of the case needs to be larger than the hole for the phone – don’t worry if it isn’t the right size we can scale it later.

Add holes to the earpiece and mouthpiece, I used ‘circle array’ for my earpiece.

Once you are happy with your look group all the objects together and export.

Now lets make the back

Create a flat shape the same size as the front piece. You can do this by copying the front, ungrouping it and removing the ‘hole pieces, then flatten off the top.

Make the back piece 2mm taller than your phone thickness measurement and use a hole piece to cut the shape of your phone out of the back. Leave a 2mm border on all sides except the top and 2mm on the base.

Now export your back and you are ready to slice and print.

Import your two parts into your normal slicer and slice using your normal profile then export and print.

Now lets put it together

Stick the front and the back parts together and leave to dry.

Once dry slot your phone in and there you have an old fashioned brick phone who’s numbers you can still press.