3D Printed Phone Stand - Adapted

 

Challenge: For a student, who is seven years old to independently create their own iPhone/phone stand.

Background: As term one has come to an end student were given various tasks relating to creating an item of their own choice.   This student decided that they wanted to create a stand for their cellphone to ensure that it had a dedicated and personalised space.

The student used their iPad and the Tinkercad design app to create the shape that they felt would work.   This task was one where it was straight forward to print it, and it was obvious that it would require some attention however it was going to lead the students potentially in another direction.

The design as it stands is going to require revision from the student.   Currently while the idea, the shape and the dimensions the phone itself needs to have a way to hook it into place or have it static as in basic testing it is sliding.   However - we have also taken some basic shapes of figures and placed them on the shape (which the student has stated is a couch) and tried it with different combinations.

This is similar to what the students were involved with last year when our students were involved in producing the furniture for the Dolls House - you can read about this detailed year long project here.

This is also potentially going to involve the resizing of figures depending on what it needs to interact with.  In the case of Lego sized figures the current dimensions are too large.

Level of Difficulty: Low at present.  This will require additional refining to meet the brief and be revised by the student who is working on the project.

Size: The print at present measures 130mm wide, 70mm deep and 60mm at the back of the design.   As noted this is going to need revision depending on a more refined project once the decision has been made.

Cost/Price as we are printing this on a Bambu H2D we are able to use the software with the printer (Bambu Studio Lab) to determine that this print as it stands uses 87g for regular PLA and has a price point of $1.75.   Obvious revisions of this print either upwards or smaller would adjust this price point.

Timeframe: This print took two hours and ten minutes to complete this print.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the student:   As evidenced by the photograph shown left if the student makes the decision to move in a Lego sized direction.   There is additional refiing for this design, such as details on the front, the seat or the bottom of the design.  If the decision is made to complete the print as a phone stand they will need to adjust it to hold the phone in place.

We have a significant number of examples with this theme here on this blog.  You can view examples from the past such as this example from 2023 here.  Further examples can be viewed here from 2024.

This was also one of our Market Day businesses from 2025 and you can follow their project and product here.   Finally you can of course use the search option on this blog which contains an entire volume of examples of projects based around this theme by clicking the link in the top right hand corner and using the keyword 'stand' or 'phone stand or iPad stand' as there are many more available examples.   All of these have been produced by students in range of seven to twelve years old using Tinkercad and their iPads.

Market Day 2025: Further Development

 

While our 2025 Market Day has been completed and will be revisited again in 2027 we are still working through some of the creations from the day.

In the case of one of the businesses, the iPad and iPhone stand group as we noted previously the entire run of products that they produced was sold prior to Market Day.

A number of people commented on the models when they were still available on the night and made additional orders, which the group has started processing.  The other unexpected development was that one of the students from another group saw the process, the product and wanted to adapt her own version of the stand, as a customised gift for a family member for Christmas.

The student who wanted to develop the design is a seven year old.  She was able to discuss the template for the other groups design, discuss the process of having the .stl file shared via an iPad and then begin the process of putting together a print.   The student again used 'Thingiverse' for the freely available coaster download and after some experiment was able to produce the 'Silver Fern' logo for the backing of the stand.   She then put a name on the reverse side and the design was completed.   She initially printed the version shown on the right, and when this had been completed she adapted the version shown left, which had larger dimensions and best suited the project.   As noted this is a seven year old.

Design One - The smaller stand.   This unit measures 50mm across was 60mm deep and had a 20mm base.  The back of the design was 65mm high.  This took one hour to print on the Bambu H2D.  It was a successful print just, in that it could hold a regular iPhone although the phone required some balance to ensure it worked as it could tip if the phone was placed too quickly.

As a result of this the student decided to increase the size of the stand, while all of the other details remained the same.   In Design Two - The larger stand measured 100mm wide was 70mm deep and had a 20mm base.   The back plate rose 65mm above the base of the unit.  This provided much more stability for the print and a phone was able to sit well on the stand.   In this version using also the Bambu H2D the print took just over two hours to complete.   As we have noted this could have been printed on one of the School Snapmaker machines however we would have expected double the print time and the finishing details around the logo and the letter would not be as detailed or precise.

Market Day Exemplars: iPad and iPhone Stands

 

Challenge: Using creativity, innovation and personalisation students from a Y3/4 classroom create a unique product for our school market day.

Background: 

This has been a design and creation that has been visited several times in the past and we were able to use some of the examples previously created by students as a discussion point for this year. This was a detailed example from 2018, this example from 2019 included a storage draw beneath the stand or an example from last year created by a seven year old from our school.

This group in the classroom had some of the students who design ideas and creations had been some of the strongest items this year.   They had originally looked at ideas but by focussing on the three criteria for our 2025 School Market Day the students settled on looking to design personalised iPad and iPhone/cellphone stands.

As a basis for their designs they used the stand template that is available on the main Tinkercad interface.   They were then able to resize, rework and develop this design template to include personalisation in form of the names of the person or the things that they might have liked.  An early example of the prototype which they ended up using was this exemplar of an iPad stand which had a high degree of personalisation.   Following this example they also used Tinkercads AR/VR tool to prototype some of the designs and then send them to people who had ordered them for further feedback to develop their ideas.   

The final major development step for the students was to include the Roland Versa Sign Maker to apply a vinyl sticker to some of the designs.  This meant that they could include details and a finish that could not be completed using scribble to design in Tinkercad.  

You can see the original post about the evolution of this project by clicking on the link here. 

Level of Difficulty: Medium.   The initial template for this work did indeed come from the Tinkercad interface however the students were able to develop it further to ensure that each one became unique with a high degree of design and creation.   There was a bit of trial and error with the additional shapes and cartoons that were added to the stands, some being more successful than others.  

An example of this approach is seen below - a student wanted a sports logo from a team, the students from my classroom felt the design would be too challenging but what they were able to do was locate a coaster, invert the coaster and then imbed the coaster into the design for the stand.

Size:These were some of the largest items that were produced for the Market Day this year by our classroom and that by its very nature limited the numbers that we were able to produce.  They also had a degree of personalisation in that each one was unique.   The phone stands typically were 80mm across and 80mm wide or deep.  The iPad stands had to be larger and were 120mm by 120mm.

Cost/Profit: We created a price scale of $5.00 for the iPhone stands and $7.00 for the iPad stands.  This was essentially just above break even point.   Once we had the concept developed and worked on the students realised that they could have raised this point however they felt that they would not be able to do this as this would disadvantage the people who had preordered.   Given the response from the Market Day that was created by customers seeing them for the first time there were a number of people who attempted to order them at this point.

Timeframe: Six hours for a iPad stand and three and a half hour for the iPhone stand (this was using the Bambu printer in terms of finishing and also timeframe.  We could have opted for the Snapmaker but the fine detail we would expect would typically not be there.

What we would do differently/next steps for the students:  The timeframe for each of these objects and the design that went into them limited what could be produced by the students and they couldn't practically produce something quickly in response to that.  We would potentially develop things such as the group using Tnkercad to create Minecraft versions of their designs further.