Introduction: Stone Phone Charging Dock

By Estlcam.com

Most phone charging docks are light and easy to tip over - so let's make a really heavy one from solid stone...

Step 1: Materials

  • Select a stone of suitable size.
    • Make sure it is not too thick because you'll need to drill all the way through it...
    • And check if it sits nicely without wobbling...
  • A diamond grinder bit...
  • And a diamond drill bit...

I've bought my diamond tools at eBay directly from China. They are incredibly cheap ( a few dollars for a whole set of 30 grinder bits ) and work very well...

Step 2: Cut the Phone Slot

  • Measure your phone and create a drawing for the slot and charging cable...
  • Mark the center of the stone...
  • Use some soft padding to clamp the stone - otherways you may damage it...
  • And tilt it forwards by a few degrees so the phone will lean backwards once the part is finished...
  • Use plenty of running water or your tool will be destroyed within seconds...

My tool is coated with diamonds at a length of 10mm and I want to cut 18mm deep...

The tools diamond coating will last a certain distance - no matter whether you cut 0.1 or 10mm deep. To make the best of your tool use as few passes as possible - so in this case set depth per pass to 9mm to cut the whole slot in just 2 passes...

I've also enabled trochoidal milling in the CAM software - this way the tool generates much less heat and lasts much longer...

If you don't want to use the stone as charger you're already finished...

Step 3: Drilling From 2 Sides

  • My drilling tool is too short to drill from just one side so I needed to turn the stone to machine it from both sides...
  • The difficult part is to align everything so upper and lower drill holes will match perfectly...
    • But there is a simple trick: just clamp a piece of scrap wood and machine it into a tight fitting counterpart for the already finished slot. Now you can just put the stone on it and everything will be aligned perfectly...

For diamond drilling it is important to use a low depth per pass setting so the tool retracts often and allows fresh water to reach the bottom of the hole.

Step 4: Machining the Cable Slot

  • Finally clamp the stone so the lower side is level...

Step 5: Glueing the Cable

  • Insert the cable...
  • Connect the phone...
  • Put it into the stone and turn everything upside down...
  • Then glue the cable into the slot and fill the hole completely with hot melt glue...
  • It is important that the phone is inserted during glueing - this makes sure the power plug will be exactly aligned the way it needs to be...
    • You can seal the area between connector and phone with some play dough before glueing - this way no glue can leak between connector, phone and slot. There is almost no risk with hot melt glue - but if you use something like epoxy this is extremely important otherwise you may not be able to remove the phone or cable again!

Step 6: Finished...