Nexus 4 Wooden Phone Case

This was originally a present (can't afford a Nexus 4 myself) So I drew up the design with reference only to a diagram of the phone I found in the user guide (scaled by googleing the outer phone dimensions)

I had planned this as a bike mount, and was going to mill it out of black perspex. However due to time time constraints and issues with milling plastic, I had to quickly mill this one out of MDF.

I was surprised how well it worked, the phone fit the case almost perfectly, a few issues were:

- speaker and camera holes didn't quite line up

- I had neglected to add holes for the proximity sensor

- top of the touch screen wasn't accessible

- the hole I'd left for the power switch was bit awkward for larger fingers.

I quite liked the look of the wooden phone case, so I tweaked the design, ordered some sheets of thin mahogany and cut a new set of phone pieces.

The pieces are layered up to create the case, the font plate is attached via several small neodymium magnets.

I also finished the case with Danish oil to protect it from moisture and dirty fingers.

I was able to slim down the whole case by milling out a pocket in both the front and back plates. This wouldn't have worked as well with MDF as it looses integrity once you remove the face of it.

Instead of leaving a hole for the power switch I designed this hinge. The edge is thinned down and not glued to the rest of the body, allowing it to flex slightly and press the power/wake switch.
When the phone is assembled the switch appears as a slight depression in the side so that you can find it easily.

 

AD371 - Shoreham Fort

This is a university project base around the Napoleonic fort at Shoreham beach on the south coast.

With a final goal of building a film studio/school of some description our first task was to create a 'camera device' to observe and interact with the site.

I conceived a device which would use the existing railings on site to take long tracking shots.

The main problem to overcome were the large lugs where the rail attached to it's posts.

After a few weeks of prototyping I set about laser-cutting my creation from MDF.

The main design consisted of several of theses notched wheels. Each wheel has four sets of bearings which sit on the rail and allow it to roll along.

When the device reaches one of the lugs on the rail, the large notched wheel will rotate, stepping over the lug and landing on it's next set of bearings.

A series of neodymium disc magnets are used to confine the wheels to 90 ° rotations, to ensure that they are always sitting properly on their bearings.

Device on site

The final device has 3 sets of 3 wheels. Each set is distributed around the rail to grip it firmly and provide a smooth ride.

The long legs help add balance and keep the lower sets of wheels in contact with the rail.

And finally here is a gif of the crawler working.

My crawler device was grouped together with two others, a camera mount that was triggered every time the crawler took a 'step', as well as a pedal powered drive system.
Whilst the camera mount worked relatively well, we had trouble rigging up the drive in the pouring rain (bad timing for our final installation).

I made another trip on a sunny day to get these pictures, but didn't have the other parts.

Still I'm pleased that the stepping action performs as intended.