Major Project: Dashboard Phone Mount – Portfolio of Timothy Jaszewski

Outside of class, I work on many personal projects which also build on what I learn in class; for example, I constructed a dashboard-mounted phone mount for my car so that I could navigate without using my phone. I wanted the design to be integrated into the dashboard so that I did not damage the dashboard and it did not intrude on my vision of the road.

I decided to mount a sheet metal plate to the radio behind the dashboard and to bolt a 3d printed ball mount onto which I clamped an off-the-shelf phone clamp. Because of the implementation of the ball mounted clamp, the phone mount retained its freedom of rotation and catered to my needs perfectly.

I designed the sheet metal part to be 3d-printed first to confirm the fitment. A sub-1 hour 3d print made sure that the sheet metal piece I would fabricate in labs was perfect on the first try

The first revision (above) of the ball mount had a lot of degrees of freedom which allowed the phone to pivot but it was not strong enough and broke at the thin neck part after continual use.

The second revision (above) was designed for strength but the phone clamp did not fit the ball. The third and final revision (below) is a compromise between strength and amount of freedom.

The last part of the project was a reinforcement piece which bolts to the sheet metal to increase stiffness as the mount would wobble back and fort

Along the way, I encountered roadblocks and made revisions until I was completely satisfied with the end-product. Another advantage to the manufacturing processes used is that any part can be easily made again if it is damaged or another needs to be made.

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