A3: Cardboard Phone Stand

Design: One of the points raised during the early stages of A3 was that we were encouraged to tweek one of the listed designs to make it a variation more suitable to us. I had a particular need for way to better record models with my phone, so I thought the stand used to film prototypes was a good challenge for me to take on.

I paint figures for me and my friends to use during our D&D sessions, and sometimes I like to share my work with people. Frequently, stills aren’t quite enough, and I have always liked the idea of recording videos of these figures. That was how I came up with the idea of making a rotating stand to record and immortalize my creations. In the sketches below, you can see my “back of the napkin” original drawing, as well as how these sketches changed over the prototyping stage.

For A3, we were presented with numerous design constraints, the most prominent of them being material. Being limited to exclusively chipboard and flute isn’t the most liberating when it comes to choosing a general makeup for a design. Luckily, to make to aid in picture taking, I didn’t think it would be too big of an issue.

While material wasn’t a “feasibility” concern, it definitely shaped many of the design choices I had to make. Because we were using cardboard and the laser cutters, I wanted to model my design after interlocking laser cut boxes. I feel like these wooden boxes have a sturdy and clean design that would fit the shape of the stand I was trying to build. It would also fulfil the design requirement of being able to fold flat for transportation purposes.

One other design decision I struggled with was the “turntable.” Originally, I had been playing around with the idea of using gears and a crank to accomplish this spinning. It seemed interesting, but I was worried that it would be too complex of a design to try to pull off in the time I had to give to this project. Ultimately, time restraints ushered me in the direction of a less complex “stacked wheel” system that could be made from just 2 large cardboard circles and an axel of some sort.

Prototyping: Once I had a fairly solid idea of the general shape, size, and structure of device I wanted to make, I started making. Using chipboard, hot glue, and a pair of scissors, I was able to make a rough prototype of the device I wanted to ultimately cut out using a laser cutter.

Much of the process used to design this version of my prototype was very simple. I primarily used my phone for scale, simply holding it up to the chipboard and cutting pieces that seemed to be the right fit. Spatial modeling was a very helpful tool to me in this stage, as I was able to make a full model at exactly the size I wanted without even using a ruler.

From here, I did use a ruler. I measured every dimension of each side of the stand and recorded those measurements. Once I had everything written down and could play with the way I wanted the pieces to go together a little more, I was able to make a vector file on cuttle.xyz that I could use to laser cut each element of my new design, which was the next step in the process.

The best part about laser cutting these models was that, technically, each section of the build was independent of each other. This meant that when there were inevitably issues in the cutting process, (and there were many of them) I could just re-cut the pieces that were needed. This happened a few times. After overcoming some initial frustrations setting up the cutters and files, my first attempt at a prototype was made. The job failed halfway through and I was left with a partially finished project with tabs I knew were too short to hold the box together.

I set out to re-design. It was a simple process, I would expand the tabs and try again on the other laser cutter. This actually worked markedly better, and I was able to at least get a good look at all of my pieces for the first time. Most of the pieces worked together well and fit, although in many places not as tightly as I would like. I realized at this time also that there were a few components of my build that weren’t quite right. The back plate was a little too wide and needed to be scaled down. Additionally, the slots I had made for the part of the device that would actually hold my phone were much too small. I would need to line them up better for my next print. After some mild alterations, however, I sent off my design to the printer one final time.

Analysis: Once again I was pretty pleased with how my prototype turned out. The interlocking box method was a unique approach to the structure issue that not many of my classmates undertook, but it’s effectiveness was reflected in my critique. Ivy, my critique partner, commented on how the large boxy pattern conveys sturdy but also tight design principles, which I really appreciate as one of my goals for this project was to have the prototype feel as close to a real product as possible.

One thing we did critique about the actual design of the device was its assemblability. I feared that the design may be too complex, and while Ivy agreed that it wasn’t the easiest thing to put together, the fact that the intended user is a fairly specific group of people led her to convince me this is okay. The larger problems we faced were the usability of the turntable and the angle of the phone stand.

Turntable — The rotating turn table at the end of the device where the figure is to sit doesn’t work as well as I had hoped on either model. We have surmised that this is largely due to a poor connection between the two discs. The best fix we have at this time is using more material to make a tighter fit in the holes of the discs, but without further trial and error it is hard to gauge how effective this solution will be.

Phone Angle — Ivy pointed out to me that, while the figure is in excellent focus and frame with my current design, the user is basically limited to a top view of the object. For this design to really be effective, we should be able to clearly see the front and back views of the model as it spins. In future iterations of this project, I expect I will want to increase the angle that the phone sits at. According to critique, this increase could be as far as moving the phone to a 90 degree angle.

In the end, this is the prototype that I feel most confident to continue to iterate on while also feeling like there is the most growth and development to still be done. I could see how a wooden version of this product with a more fleshed out rotating mechanism could be highly desirable, and I will likely continue working on this project in my own time when the rest of the work for 451 slows down.