Phone Case Update: V4

Back by popular demand: update on the iPhone case! Although not much has happened since the last iteration, the fourth (and current) version does exist and is kind of cool, I think. V4 is made for the iPhone 5/5s, and features a thicker border, tighter screw holes, and glows in the dark!

Out-of-focus selfie

!!!!!

As for the other version, there's still a few remaining V3s in the wild, which will likely be replaced soon just for the sake of giving my friends cool stuff.

Phone Case Versions 1-3

Last winter, I designed a phone case for fun. When I designed it, I envisioned it out of aluminum. This idea was quickly scrapped as I thought about the effects on signal strength and how it was very easy to 'hold the iPhone 4 wrong,' according to Steve Jobs. In the summer of 2012, BU got a MakerBot Replicator and I decided to give my design a shot. 

Original.

There happened to be black plastic in the machine, so the case was black. It was a pretty good first try. The major things I didn't like about it were how flimsy it was, and how it didn't hold on to the phone as well as I wanted. It could be pushed side to side over the grooves on the iPhone 4 very easily. Additionally, the buttons were a bit tough to reach, despite the little recessions in the case.

At the time of the pictures, I didn't have any 1/2" 4-40 screws on hand, so this is the best I have. The screws were filed down and a hex nut was put on the back to hold it in place. This idea was scrapped because the nuts kept falling off and also placed unnecessary strain on the very thin corners of the first iteration of the case.

The next iteration came in late November. I had been using the first version for about a month after my 'real' case bit the dust. Props to Speck though, that case lasted me a year and a half. This second version had several modifications. The first was that the buttons were SUPER easy to reach, and the second was that everything was thicker. I did print one back piece with hexagonal cutouts for nuts just to entertain the idea again, but it felt forced and didn't look that great, given that I wanted to keep the case as compact as possible.

 This time the plastic in the machine was not black, but red!

After using the case for a few weeks and completing finals for fall 2012, I realized that I hadn't got any gifts for most of my friends for their respective winter holidays. Like any clever, financially broke engineer, I printed them iPhone cases with a little bit of personalization to make it seem like I put some effort into their gifts. (Boy, did I fool them...) Unfortunately, several weeks later one of them reported a four foot drop onto a tile bathroom floor which spawned a crack in the top. This quickly propagated inward and the upper left joint came loose. Just today, the other friend sent me a picture of his mutilated phone case, which had suffered similar failures. I'll take this time to say that my 'V2' case is perfectly fine and has survived several drops, albeit not onto tile floors. 

Tile floor: 1
  Case V2: 0

Bear attack.

Regardless, this motivated me to design version 3, which made the top piece significantly thicker and changed the structure of the side on the front only. The left side now appears to be whole from the front, but has a chunk cut out so that fingers can easily reach buttons from the back without sacrificing structural integrity.

So there you have it. We'll see how this iteration fares in the real world and I'll update the post with changes. Side note: several people have suggested that I try to mill this out of a stronger material, such as polycarbonate. This sounds like a good idea and wouldn't be too difficult to do in theory. This might happen. Hmmm.

Custom iPhone Case

Last Friday I designed a case for my iPhone 4. My goals for this case are for it to be 3d printed to test for fit and functionality, and then machined from aluminum on the Haas CNC in the basement of the manufacturing building. We'll see if that happens...

Front

Left side

Glamour shot

The case adds about .05" to each side of the phone and squares off the corners. The pieces are held together by four #1-72 machine screws. Hopefully I'll find a tap for that size, but if I don't it's not the end of the world. I'll post updates when it gets made.

Stator Wrapping and Xbox Case Mod Preview

I finally got off the ground with (name TBA) scooter's drive system. After many months of planning and procrastination, I began wrapping my stator... and boy do my thumbs hurt. Shane told me before I began that there is a spectrum of quality of stator wrapping from neat and meticulous to quick and dirty. I chose to pursue the neat and meticulous path because a more tightly wound stator would be a more powerful one. A side effect of this path is that my right thumb and forefinger are now throbbing from pulling as hard as I could on wire for an hour straight. I am not looking forward to wrapping another 11 teeth, but it must be done!

This just popped into my head: I might call this project Time Scooter. Because I've been working on it since August. We'll see if the name sticks.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Wrapping configuration diagram

Wrapping two strands at the same time is tough.

Another project I've been doing on the side this past week is creating a clear case for my xbox made from acrylic. Unfortunately 3-402 has been (hopefully temporarily) closed before MIT's IAP starts, at which point it will be occupied full time by a class. I haven't been able to make any new parts, but I have started to model the case in SolidWorks. So far I have taken my Xbox apart four times, designed and made a prototype of the motherboard mount... and that's about it. I was aiming to complete this project before school starts again, but that might not happen because of the fabrication delay.

Let's see what this thing looks like on the inside.

What an Xbox looks like on the inside.

Might be tough to see (it's clear!) but here we have the first version of the motherboard mounting piece.

Hard drive module, disassembled

Ideally I will buy a ~120 Gb 2.5" hard drive and format it to xbox's native system so I don't have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for a tiny amount of space. The current drive was $80 for a 20 Gb USED, which I find to be absolutely ridiculous.

ALASKA UPDATE!
I just got off the phone with Ed Moriarty, who is currently in McGrath, Alaska, and he says the Aurora Bears are a huge success! The kids up there are having a great time making the bear assemblies, and even the superintendent of schools showed up to make one!