2009 Suzuki Swift Console Horizontal Phone Holder

Around 4 years ago I designed a very basic phone holder for my 2009 Suzuki Swift, so that I could use its satnav function remotely, in horizontal mode, on my car's stereo screen.

It worked very well, and (since I'd anticipated getting a larger phone at the time) has continued to do so through several iterations of phones since that time. I think I actually ended up cutting a small piece out for my most recent phone, but other than that…

But, despite that butchery, my current phone (overdue for replacement!) is still a very tight fit in what was once a cavernous space for my earlier phones. And, to be honest, it's also now a complete pain to remove from the holder because of the lack of clearance available.

Since I have a new printer to play with, my vigour is renewed, and I decided it was time to update things.

I started with my previous design for the backplate dimensions. I then added in my spring-type phone holder that I designed 5 years back. It was quite narrow (as these things usually are) but, since I wanted a more integrated look,  I made it much wider to fit in better with the overall design aesthetic. Ah, much better! 

Since I got my new printer, I keep running into a recurring problem: The tolerances I needed on the old machine were much greater than the new one. So after I'd printed and assembled the new holder, I found it wouldn't stay in place over bumps as the old one had done. It's because the design relies on friction between a rectangular TPU ring and the centre console. But, because of the greater precision of the new printer, there wasn't enough.

My first attempt to cure that situation was to alter the design of the TPU ring: I added corrugated surface in the hope that this would give better grip. And it did - Just not enough to keep it in place!

I had all but resigned myself to having to reprint the whole backplate and TPU ring over again, when I remembered I had some small bits of self-adhesive 2 mm foam I'd used to get rid of a vibration on my PC's side panel. I could stick this to the centre console to give a little more grippiness to the surface. I had just enough to make up 2 strips; a full width one for the bottom, and a shorter one for the less-visible top. Once installed, the holder stays in place perfectly, but can easily be taken out for access to the compartment behind.

As I worked on this design, I printed several prototypes using normal tree support. Each time I found that the support material came away beautifully… right up until I printed the final model. A tiny piece of the design broke off with the support (see pictures). Thankfully It's not an essential part. It's only there to keep the springs in place during final assembly (you know what springs are like, they have a mind of their own. If they can escape and hide in the darkest recesses of the room you're working in, they will - take it from me). Once the unit's assembled that part's pretty well done its job. So I couldn't be bothered to print the whole bloomin' component out again, just for the sake of such a tiny piece of plastic. I chose to play russian roulette with that one spring, and I won - this time!

The springs I used were harvested from empty gel pens a few years back.They're a pretty common type of pen spring. They're about 25mm (1 inch) long with an internal diameter of about 3.5mm (1/8 inch). Mine were a little tired as I'd already used them in another design for for about 5 years, and they'd developed a bit of a “memory”. Because of this I had to glue 2 small packing pieces in the top part of the design's phone grip. But this won't be necessary for those with springs fresh from a pen, and I'm only pointing it out to explain what you see in the pictures.

To give potential printers a choice of whether they want the Suzuki logo or not, I've included STL files for both. I've also added a fully-coloured flush logo for those with multi-colour printers. The only downside to this is it needs to be printed flat on the base (as per my pictures) so support will be required.

So that's today's gripping episode taken care of. Please note that a stunt phone was used for some of my pictures, as nobody's worked out a way to take a remote photo of the device taking the photo yet!

All that remains is for me to wish you all Happy Printing! Ta-ta for now.