I was talking with some friends of mine a few days ago about our cell phones. It came up that I had no longer had a cell phone case that clipped to my belt that I made several years ago. At that time I 3D printed a case for my phone which worked but was rather bulky. I had since that time replaced my phone several times with a new phone. After having that conversation I decided to redesign a new belt clip phone case using acrylic parts. Here is how it all turned out.
The belt clip itself for the case was again 3D printed but the rest of the case was made using my Glowforge. It took me a couple of tries to get the assembly to work the way I wanted but in the long run it is a much slimmer case than the original and can be repaired if parts the case is damaged in any way.
Here is what the case looks like with the main parts of the housing in pieces. The key to the assembly was to be able to install 6-32 bolts and nuts into it. The nuts are buried inside the assembly to give it a nice clean look once everything is put together.
You can see in the photos the hexagon shaped holes for the nuts that are in the different layers for the assembly. The different colors of these parts shown are from one of my first attempts to get the assembly working correctly. Luckily I only had to make a couple changes and remake the parts with my Glowforge to get the case to work the way I had planned.
The 3D printed belt clip on the back of the case worked out very well. I used Weld-On 4 acrylic adhesive to mount the clip to the case by surrounding it with an acrylic frame and face plate. This locked the 3D printed belt clip in place. This worked out very well and gives the project a very clean look as well. I thought the engraving of the tree on the top clear face stands out very well also with my back phone inserted into the assembly. Let me know what you think of my latest project!
