Phone Toaster

Overview

This project came about because despite trying different methods to increase productivity, I was still on my phone way too much. The solution I came up with is a device that takes your phone away and returns it after a predetermined amount of time.

Takeaways

What I learnt most in this project is how to design parts that will be made specifically with a 3D printer. When I first printed the guide Rails and the phone holder, I printed them both standing upright which left the print-lines in the same orientation and caused a lot of noise and friction when sliding against eachother. I fixed this by printing the guide rails in a different orientation. Another problem I ran into regarding print lines was the friction between the locking mechanism and several other parts. I noticed that plastic touching the bottom plate of the printer was always very smooth. I used this observation to print thin (0.1mm) layers to glue to each face where I wanted to reduce sliding friction.

In addition to learning a lot about printing, I got to learn about how screens work and how to program a user interface in C++ using the Arduino TFT library.