An overengineered car phone charger cradle

thingiverse

This is a cradle to hold a phone over a wireless charger in a car. Something you can buy for peanuts but an interesting design challenge. It's tailored to fit in a cup-holder and allow lots of freedom of movement in the orientation of the cradle/phone. I publish it because the mechanisms to allow the many degrees of freedom while providing a secure support for the phone are rather neat. Video of it in action https://youtu.be/S5Fj1XJor38 The design files are available in native Rhino3D and also AutoCAD, Sketchup, Lightwave and Renderman so you can perhaps leverage the novel pivot mechanism in other applications. I note that it is only the advent of high quality 3D printers that makes the complexity of the pivot something that is not only possible but trivial to manufacture. I could not imagine machining this!! Hurrah for modern technology...