Portfolio
Laser Cut Phone Stand
Introduction
For Assignment 3: Laser Cut Object, I designed and prototyped a phone stand for taking birds-eye view photos. This could be useful for taking pictures of a user testing mobile prototype.
I created three total prototypes: Iteration 1 came from my first design (which didn’t work out), and Iterations 2 and 3 came from my second design.
Design | First Iteration
My design goals (and points of evaluation) were the following:
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Usability: Using the phone stand, the phone is able to capture a phone screen-sized object below.
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Feasibility: The phone stand is able to hold up my phone, weighing around 200 grams, at a 0 degree angle (flat)
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Desirability: the user can take birds-eye view photos or videos without any part of the stand showing up on screen
I couldn’t find any ideas online for birds-eye phone stands that weren’t professionally made (ie. with clamps, metal bendable necks), so it was initially hard to imagine how to design one out of flat material. For my first iteration, I took inspiration from building scaffolding to support the phone. This first prototype had 6 pieces, arranged in a grid-like scaffolding fashion.
Since I imagined using this to capture images or videos of a prototype phone screen, I used my phone case as an approximation and held my phone high enough so that the entire phone case appeared on a photo, which was around 15cm high.
Prototype | First Iteration
I hand-cut the prototype out of a thin chipboard. The phone stand stood appropriately and could hold my phone, but the phone stand was largely visible in frame (see the second photo). I tried cutting away the pieces that were visible, just to see how much I could get away with, and once I cut away all the pieces of the stand that were visible, the phone stand could no longer hold up the phone.
This was a little stressful because I had put a decent amount of work into this direction and now I had to scrap this prototype, but this iteration made me curious if I could make a phone stand with a wider base, one that could spread out the weight of the phone.
Design | Second Iteration
For my second iteration, I shaped it using triangles and trapezoids, since these two shapes can spread out a lot of weight from a small surface area to a large surface area. I still used some of the scaffolding idea from the previous iteration to form the actual structure that my phone rested on.
Prototype | Second Iteration
Knowing that I was building this iteration on a thicker chipboard made me more confident it would stand correctly, and my hand-cut prototype (the first picture below) proved this. I used Inkscape to create a file for printing on the laser cutter. I was most unsure of the kerf for printing the tongue-and-groove parts to my file.
Using the laser cutter was difficult, largely due to file processing issues when transferring from Inkscape to Illustrator, and then struggling with some errors on the laser cutter. After working with two makerspace staff members for nearly an hour, we figured out the settings that were working incorrectly, and the print went through!
This is the final build of the prototype.
Analysis
I user tested the builds with two of my peers and heard helpful feedback on the three points of evaluation I began with. My build seemed usable to them, and one reviewer appreciated how the space beneath is roomy, saying how this could be used to take pictures of documents. My build was also feasible, as this final iteration doesn’t collapse. My build also was desirable because images captured on it didn’t show any part of the frame.
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This image shows all three iterations: bottom, the first iteration, top left, the second iteration, and top right, the third iteration.
I was concerned with the amount of pieces in my prototypes (my final was 11 pieces), and they said that using a sturdier or thicker material could help me decrease the number of parts needed.
For next time, I really want to improve on predicting kerf size on the laser printer. My final build is stable, but due to kerf the fits are just a little loose so the stand wobbles slightly. I also want to work on having less pieces in a laser cut build, and I think this could be solved by better kerf prediction and sturdier or thicker material.