Designing A Mobile Phone Mount

In the car, I like to use my phone for playing podcasts and directions.  My work phone was recently upgraded, and I was looking for a practical way to mount it.

As cars are kept for years, and phones change regularly, I didn’t want:

• anything permanent
• anything that used adhesives (they never come off!)
• suction cups
• anything that blocks vents

The neatest design I’ve seen so far is a steering column mount on Thingiverse, which I had been thinking of modifying for my phone.  As my car has a two-tiered dashboard, I thought I would just create a dock that fit my phone in the lower tier.

I prototyped the dock with pink insulation foam, intending to model  and then 3D print the finalized design.

After using the prototype for a week, I realized a 3D printed dock was overkill.  The phone pretty much stood up by itself on the dashboard, without the dock, so long as I wasn’t driving on ramps well over the speed limit.

I just needed something to provide a little friction, to stop the phone from slipping around.  I ended up sacrificing a beloved mouse pad.

It works great!