Transcript:
Cool, how’s it going makers? Devin, here again with make anything and it’s another week, so we’ve got another great episode. So this week I had a little project that is very specific to me, but I think it can help you guys too, and, actually, the fact that its specific is a big part of why I’m 3d printing it, so here’s the dilemma. I’ve got this Nexus 6p I’ve had this phone for a couple weeks now. And I freaking love it. I rely on this thing to navigate in my car, but right now I don’t have a phone mount for it. I end up just sticking it in my car dashboard where it’s always falling over and covering some little gauges that I should probably be able to keep an eye on. So I decided I needed a proper phone Mount. I mean, I had this thing. Which is kind of a universal mount. But that’s kind of the problem. You know, this thing is made to hold every phone, which means it doesn’t take into consideration the specific things that are happening with this phone and my car, first of all my phones really big, so it barely fits on there. Second of all, it’s got this ball joint. That’s really floppy. You can’t hold up my big phone. If I wanted it to be balanced, I’d have to connect it in the middle, but the volume button is in the middle of my phone, too, so it would be constantly pressing the volume button, which just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Also, it’s got some kind of clip that’s supposed to snap into your air-conditioning vent, but it’s just wobbly and floppy all around. It feels like junk. It’s not fun to use, and this is exactly the kind of scenario where 3d printing is made to shine. It wouldn’t make sense for a manufacturer to make a phone mount for the Nexus 6p in the 1999 BMW. But that’s exactly what I want so today. I’m going to show you guys how I was able to make the perfect phone mount for me in less than a day, so the first thing we’re gonna have to do take some measurements. So this is the air-conditioning unit in the middle of my car and I’m going to take advantage of this top section that doesn’t swivel so that I can mount my phone on that, so I take measurements of the inside as well as the thickness of this slot and then I see how much of a gap I have underneath the slot as well, so I convert that into a sketch and put all my measurements in there, so I came up with this little concept with 3d printing in mind, so this surface here is what’s going to be on the build plate and that’s going to give me strength on this clip part because the layers will be vertical, so I can flex it without worrying about it breaking and for this other long section, the 45-degree angle is going to give some strength to those layers as well. So with a rough idea of what I want to do, I’m going to open up SolidWorks and start sketching on the right plane and I’ll just use the line tool to bring in the side view that I sketched earlier so once. I’ve got that done. I can use the smart dimension tool and start adding values, so I’ll make the height of this clip 80 based on the height of my phone and I’ll make all these walls three millimeters thick because that’s just a good thickness for giving them enough strength without being super bulky. I’ll make this space nine point two millimeters based on the thickness of my phone and then this little tab. I’ll just make four millimeters, so I got something to lift up with my thumb, And then I’ll go through and start giving everything to mention this back. Section here is based on the measurements. I got from my car. So this eight point Eight millimeter section should fit into my car’s nine millimeter air conditioning slot, really well, and so on, I just go through and give everything dimensions so that the sketch is fully defined and nothing weird is happening. So from that side view, I can just extrude out 100 millimeters now. I’m just going to start cutting away from the model, so I create this rectangle and I make the top clip 20 and the bottom 1 13 and then I cut through everything like that, and we’ve got some extra little bits back here that we don’t want, so I’ll create another square and just keep extrude cutting away. So even though a 3d printer is an additive technology, you can still model by subtracting and just to finish things off. I’m going to go through and add village where I think they look nice or where they can add strength to the part, so even on these small inside corners. I’m going to give a tiny Filat because that’ll give a little bit of extra strength compared to just a sharp angle in the model once. I’ve got all the Philips in there. I’m ready to send it off to the printer, so I pretty much always print in PLA, but since this is a part for the inside of my car, that gets really hot. I have to use something else, so I’ve got this tea glaze. Which is a high-strength. PTT that’s a bit stronger and more temperature resistant. Unfortunately, that also led to my first print failing because I didn’t quite have the settings dialed in for this material, but the failed print actually ended up helping me out because I was able to diagnose some problems like the clip on the bottom. Not really holding on to the phone. I also went back to my car, and I realized that the model I was. Printing wouldn’t fit because the top and bottom slot of the air conditioning are kind of offset. So I’m gonna have to go back into SolidWorks and readjust my model. So coming back in the first thing I do is just delete this one. Fill it because that corner was giving me a little bit of trouble when printing with PE TT and then to get this clip on the bottom as well. I’m going to do a little quick fix by deleting this bottom section and I’ll just draw a center line out from the center of that line so that I can select this top clip in the center line and then I just use the mirror function to quickly. Bring that same sketch to the bottom. So the next thing I have to take care of is having this part. Be too wide, so I’m going to go ahead and reduce that to 10 millimeters now, but I still want a good amount of surface area that’s holding onto the air-conditioning vents, so I’m going to extrude off of this surface and kind of extend what I had, but make it thinner on the top so that it fits in my car, so I bring this top section down to three millimeters and I delete all the extra lines and I’ll just give this a little fill it, so it matches the rest of the style, and then I can extrude that back to the original length, so it’s basically the same thing that I had earlier, but just a little less bulky so that it fits in my car. I’ll just give that a final fill it, and then I’m ready to give it another shot on the printer, so I had more success with the PTT, the second time around by printing, nice and slow and turning down my fan power to 20% so that the layers would stick together a little better and what I got was a really nice, solid part, so the next step was to bring in my foam and it snapped in just amazingly, so you can see there’s a bit of curvature there on the clip, which is actually good. That means there’s some pressure keeping the phone in place, so I can take the phone on and off really easily, but there’s also a really good grip, so it’s not going to fall off while I’m driving and the final test was to see if it will fit in my car and it fit just great, there’s a little bit of wiggle, but overall, it’s super sturdy, so even when I’m working with one hand and filming with the other, I felt very confident with this clip, and I’m not worried at all about it falling off while I’m driving. So there you go, guys. I think I just made a case for why 3d printing and manufacturing can both exist. Manufacturing is great when you got to make lots and lots of one thing. I think it’s going to be a pretty long while before a 3d printer can keep pace with an injection molding machine. But as I’ve shown you today, 3d printing can come in real handy when it comes to very specific cases, it would kind of be stupid for a manufacturer to go through all the work of making this thing an injection molding it to sell to the 10 people in the world who actually need it and yet thanks to 3d printing. I’m holding exactly that in my hands right now. So I hope you guys all thought this was cool. I think it’s a great exercise because it’s pretty simple but super customizable. So if you guys end up doing this for your own cars and your own phones. I really want to see how it turns out. I’m curious if this kind of solution will work for your cars or if you need to come up with something else. And if you just happen to own a Nexus 6p and a 1999 BMW, three to eight, I well shucks friend. It’s good to meet you, and I think you were really lucky to stumble upon this channel. Huh, hope this was a cool episode. You guys make sure to subscribe. If you want to see more of my projects, you know, why not throw a like in there to maybe a comment? I want to hear from you guys anyways. I’ll probably be sitting here clicking this thing for a while, so snap it, snap snappy. Snap that gets me! That gets me every time. Good snap. That’s got to be my favorite thing about 3d printing, just making things snap. Oh, it’s good, it’s good snacks.