The Twig -a Multi-use Charging Cable

I was surfing the internet a while ago and I found this cool but simple gadget. It was a phone charger, created into a stand. The stand is flexible so you can adjust the positioning of the device that is currently charging on it. I originally found it on kickstarter, and is advertised by the name of Twig. I decided that I could make something similar to it and gain a great tool. This can be a regular charger, but tangle free, it can be your phones charging dock, it can be a regular dock, and it can be a tripod! While mine is not the most beautiful thing there is, it could be made to look a lot nicer. My silicon was defective and didn't set right, but with some better luck and some better materials, you could make some really cool looking versions of this.

Things to look at for this project:

The original project on Kickstarter

Buy the original project

sugru.com project

In this project you are going to need these materials:
100% silicone*
cornstarch*
3 in. long charging cable (or similar)
9-18 in. of bendable but very stiff wire (I used 18 in. of 14 gauge wire)

*These are needed to make a Sugru substitute, sugru would probably work a lot better but I didn't have any on hand. So if you have sugru, you don't need these items

The first thing that you are going to want to do is to create a silicone "solution" to hold the whole thing together. To do this you need silicone and cornstarch. Take some silicone, put it in something that you can mix it in, and add some cornstarch. Start with a little bit of cornstarch and mix it in, then add in more as you go until you reach a good consistency, which is a little less thick than play-dough. For a more detailed instructions, go to mikey77's ible here, he made basically what I was trying to make. Then set that aside as we prep all of the other things.

Now, in order to be able to act as a stand, the Twig needs to have some support. For this you are going to need to get your wire. If you already have strong enough wire then your good, but I needed to twist mine together in order to get it to be strong enough to hold up my device. I used a 14 gauge wire. You need two strips for the side legs, and one for the center leg. A quick and easy way to twist the wire is to put two in a vise, then insert the other end of both into a drill and close the drill bit tightener thing. Then just turn the drill on for a couple seconds and it will twist the wires together.

Now you need to start preparing your charger to be put together. The first thing you need to do is get your wire that you preped in the last step. then you need to wrap one or two around the central wire on the charger, to give that support, and then leave the other two for putting on with silicone. One thing that I didn't do, but might be beneficial, was to add support to the two side legs before adding silicone, to give it more support; or to connect all three wires by twisting them together. Once I finished, it definitely needed a little more support, so that's something to consider.

Now to add silicone! You are going to want to have a water source handy to keep your hands wet, silicone is a lot easier to handle when your hands are wet, because it doesn't stick to your fingers. Then just start grabbing the silicone and adding it onto the cable. I started by doing the cable and the two legs separately, then doing it a second time to connect them later. Then just smooth out the silicone and wait for it to cure. I did the central and support wires first, then let that cure (as seen in the fourth picture), and then siliconed them together (as seen in the fifth picture).

If you are using sugru, then just do the same except just with sugru, instead of the silicon solution.

I hope that you liked my instructable, and enjoy your new charger. It is really helpful in a lot of situations, it can be used to take pictures on a timer, video chat hands free, or just as a clock next to your bed at night. With the stiff design it is now easy to get to, easy to find, and won't tangle with all of your wires when put with them.