iPhone 5 Wall Outlet Dock

Printing an iPhone accessory seems to be a normal thing around Thingiverse. When I stumbled across Boardofdenver's original, whilst looking for iPhone cases, I thought it was clever. Damn clever.

There however were three problems I found with the design:

• It would take up to 8 hours for my MakerBot Thing-O-Matic to print.

• It had so much extraneous plastic both for support and in the object itself.

• The cord wraps on the back were difficult to print; requiring more support (wasted plastic) and useless in the mount if it were be designed so the cord would wrap around the plug.

I set a few goals for my redesign:

• Reduce the amount of plastic used in the stand by at least 40%
• Reduce the amount of support required to print the pieces.
• Cut the print into two parts allowing for simpler printing.

I'm happy to say I delivered after 13 hours of design work from AutoCAD, TinkerCAD and Sketchup.

Design Accomplishments:

• 8+ hour print reduced to 3.9 hours
  Faster with accelerated printers but I have yet to move over to MakerWare and will be building a RepRap derivative soon so I am avoiding it to some degree.
• 67.3% less ABS plastic used.
  A whopping 27.31% less than what I was designing for.
• 17% less support material.
  More can be removed over time with creative printing angles. I'm reaching for 25% reduction.
• Infill reduced to 25% instead of project 30%
  Was experimental put completely successful.
• 3 Shells reduced to 2.
  Enough strength and thickness for included parts.

Next Iteration Goals:

• Add Sound Amplification Horns
  Horns and/or cups under speaker holes to bounce sound up and away like many seen here on Thingiverse

• Better Coupling Fit
  Parts holding power brick meet the stand with some spudging and post-processing. The meeting joint is almost 1mm and so relies on KrazyGlue for adherence. I'd like to take adhesive out of the equation all together.

On the end it works great. I'm pleased and it serves my purpose well.

Thanks Boardofdenver for a really great design.