This is a fanciful, yet functional rotating, spiral bevel gear, iPhone dock. Yep, that’s a mouthful. This is the fun and ultimate EngiNerdy desk piece. Anyway, I’m an engineer by trade, so I’m a gear head. This dock was designed for the OEM Apple lightning cord to route through the rotational shaft/base. This is to prevent binding when the assembly rotates. I used GearTrax CAD software to create a perfect spiral bevel gear mesh at a 3:1 reduction. I printed this in eSun white PLA on an Ultimaker 2 Extended:
Like this design? Want me to make a custom design/prototype for you? How about a finished 3D printed project sent right to you in the mail? All of this and more can be found at my website or my shop on Etsy!
The gears should be 100% fill to prevent any delimitation under gear loading. The shaft is press fit, so use a rubber hammer and a socket over the shaft to assemble to the pinion. The bolts used to attach the dock to the 51 tooth gear are M4x20mm Hex bolts that you can buy at any regular hardware store down the street. Leave a comment if you have any questions or concerns? Have fun!
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
