Smartphone Mount

There are some pretty neat solutions for mounting smartphones on a car dashboard. The mounts make it easy and safe to use a smartphone as a GPS or listen to Pandora on those long trips. Unfortunately it wasn't clear just by looking at pictures on the web that one of these mounts would fit exactly right. I decided to make a custom mount using my old friend, styrene. Styrene is a soft plastic that's really easy to work with. However, with the demise of the neighborhood hobby store, it's gotten hard to find. Fortunately there's a model railroad shop nearby that sill carries styrene sheets and shapes such as angles and I-beams. Plastruct and Evergreen Models seem to be the two major brands.

First I took measurements of the phone and designed a holder on paper. I found that the plastic angle-beams were the most versatile for this application. I bought all the 3/8 angle-beams in the store (about 6). I cut the pieces in a mitre box and then dry-fit them to make sure my calculations were right.

Next I glued the pieces using Testors liquid cement. This stuff actually melts the plastic and forms a great bond. Another advantage is that it's fast-drying. I used alligator clips, a pin-vice, and a hemostat to clamp the pieces while they dried.

I wanted to use the "cubby hole" in the dash to hold the mount. I took measurements and found that it was shaped like a truncated pyramid. What a complex shape! I did my best to measure the inside of the box, and constructed a box to mount the smart phone holder on. When I did my final test fit, I found that the box was too wide to be fully inserted into the cubby hole! The reason was that I had measured the cubby hole at the middle, but the inner edges were rounded so it was just a little narrower where it made contact with my box. Here's the beauty of styrene. I cut the box in half longitudinally, taking out a few millimeters of material. I used more angles to re-connect the now slightly narrower box. This time it fit perfectly. I connected the holder to the mount and put a little piece of velcro at the bottom to keep it steady.

I have yet to paint it. If I paint it, it'll be white because styrene has a tendency to melt in the hot sun.