I was inspired by firstly the need for a phone stand, and searching on thingiverse didn't yield anything I was too keen on, and secondly by the snap-fit box with living hinge that I laser-cut awhile back. This was a pattern from thingiverse; I just added my initials in script.
It just came to me out of the blue one slow Friday at work that I could use that living hinge as a fold-able joint, with a slip fit tabbed insert for the phone support. I started madly sketching on my pad at work, using a straight-edge and measuring paper, and cutting said paper to build a prototype. I looked up after a few minutes to find two of my co-workers tilting their heads and smiling at me, quite amused. That was quite funny.
But I got my idea out of my head and on to paper, and then went on to inkscape and continued from there. My first design was okay, but I had problems with the tabs not fitting. Next try the hinges wanted to crack. This I realized was because I hadn't followed the example of the box hinge and had made my dashes too long and too far apart.
I also thought I needed to make the hinge bigger, but after cutting six stands today, I see that created a slippage problem - the tabs want to slip back. So the hinge improvements I made earlier this week helped, but I should not have increased the area of the hinge.
Changes to make for my next attempt:
1. Reduce overall area of hinge
2. Extend hinge dash to within 1/16" of edge
3. Move tabby's hole further back (I added a hole for charger & audio wires and the two don't align)
4. Increase cutting time efficiency by changing placement of components on material: butt edges, rotate
5. Aesthetic changes to a couple of patterns: stars, robots, button flowers
1 comment:
Great Work Annette!! will love to see your complete Phone Stands
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