3 Cell Phone Charging Stand

My wife asked me to make this and then sketched a rough idea of what it should look like. I always jump on these requests as I remember the “What do we need a 3D printer for?” statements.

Well, I designed this to be like her picture adding my own requirements. 1) I wanted a place to wrap extra cord to make it look better. And, 2) make it so it could be expanded for more shelves. While that could still be done I never needed to add the extra base. I was going to use dove-tail joints but I saw another holder (I sorry I don’t remember who, but if you know who it is, let me know and I will add it) joint that I liked better. I incorporated it into my design as I wanted to have removable shelves (breakage, color change – whatever)

Step 1: 3D Printer Files

Here are the files if you want to make one for yourself.

I got it all printed out. The first two shelves were kind of tight, but the still slid in. I’m just not sure they would come out. I edited the shelf and made the connector a little smaller so it would fit. The last shelf fit perfectly!

Step 2: Oh No!

I presented it to my wife who then said she wasn’t sure of the ‘color’. What's wrong with blue?

As you might know, it isn’t a quick job printing out the parts on something this big. So, what could I do?...... At first I tried to spray paint it in white – oh, what a mistake! It looked horrible, maybe I was going to have to reprint it.

I have admired some of the prints that others get, and one person revealed his secret, XTC-3D. A brush-on coating for 3D printed parts. I ordered some on EBay (24 oz. for around $24 US).

I did not take all the steps ‘required’ in prepping for a good coating. I did it the fast and ‘anything is better that what it looks like now’ attitude. A quick coating, not covering everything – just what was going to show.

Well it turned out better than expected. I then spray painted white. It looks good. It smoothed all the bumps, even made the shelves impossible to remove now as it filled in most of the opens spaces between parts. The one shelf I waited to install, as it has a screw hole for mounting, had to have the interconnecting points cleaned with a file and Xacto knife.

In the end, we didn’t use the screw mounting. We just got some double-sided tape that is meant for picture frames (14-pound load rated) and stuck it to the kitchen wall to keep our phones from getting wet by the sink.