A phone stand seems like the most pointless thing to spend money on twice, yet most of us keep doing it. Every time a model changes or a stand cracks, you’re back on a marketplace scrolling through plastic blocks for $15 plus shipping. The machines and the files needed to make this stuff yourself have gotten so cheap and so available that buying another stand doesn’t make sense.
This is cheaper than you think
A printer will pay for itself after a few things
I used to avoid printing things out until I realized how cheap and accessible 3D printers have become. The cost of getting started has dropped a ton, so it’s easier than ever to basically have a little factory in your living room. A decent beginner-friendly FDM printer, which uses melted plastic filament, usually runs somewhere between $150 and $500. There are things to keep in mind, but if you need one, they’re not that expensive anymore.
I avoid the upfront cost by going to my library. They let you rent machines, which can cost a bit more over the long run, but I don’t print enough to need one every day. Even if you buy a cheap one, it usually comes with features like auto bed leveling and fast print speeds that used to be found only on printers costing thousands of dollars.
If you plan to use it regularly, buying a printer might feel like an unnecessary splurge at first, but once you look at the math comparing material costs to retail prices, it starts to make a lot more sense.
PLA filament, which is the go-to for beginners, usually costs $20 to $30 per kilogram. Break that down, and you’re looking at about two to three cents per gram. So something like a phone case or a phone stand uses barely any filament at all, usually amounting to somewhere between 30 and 50 cents’ worth of material.
Compare that to stores charging $20 to $30 for the same basic plastic item, and you’re skipping markups that can run as high as 4,000%. Also, running the printer costs barely anything, so you don’t even need to include that cost.
So once you’re making your own parts and accessories for fifty cents to five dollars a pop, the printer basically pays for itself after just a few things you would’ve otherwise bought at full price.
Finding and printing designs is pretty simple
Free sites and slicing software do the heavy lifting
Going from nothing to a custom-made phone stand sitting on your desk is actually pretty simple. You start by digging through the huge world of free 3D model sites online. Places like Thingiverse, or search engines like Yeggi, are loaded with thousands of free designs that people have already made for pretty much any device or purpose you can think of.
You don’t need to know anything about CAD software or how to design things yourself; you can just search for what you want, like a simple dual-angle stand for your desk, a mount for your car’s dashboard, or a nightstand charging dock that has little slots built in to route the cable neatly.
A lot of these designs are pretty clever too, like stands that print fully assembled and just fold open right off the print bed, no extra work needed. Once you find something you like, you download the file, which usually comes as an STL.
Downloading that file doesn’t mean you’re ready to print yet. First, it has to go through a process called slicing, which turns the 3D model into instructions the printer can follow. You’d use slicing software like Cura or PrusaSlicer for this. The software acts as the middleman between the design file and the real object coming out of the printer. When you load the STL into the slicer or editor, the program slices the model into a ton of thin horizontal layers, almost like a loaf of bread.
From there, you tweak a handful of settings to get the best balance of strength, speed, and how much material you’ll use. For something like a phone stand, you don’t need it to be solid all the way through. Just make sure to set the infill somewhere between 10% and 30%, using a pattern like gyroid or cubic. This leaves air gaps inside that still hold up well structurally while saving a good chunk of plastic and print time.
Since you’ll be sliding your phone in and out of the stand all the time, it helps to set two or three outer wall layers (shells) so the outside is sturdy even though the inside is mostly hollow.
Once you’ve got all that dialed in, the slicer spits out G-code, and that is just the set of instructions the printer follows. This is every movement on the X, Y, and Z axes, how hot the nozzle should get, when to retract the filament, how fast the fans should spin, all of it. The software also gives you a rough estimate of how long the print will take, based on how far the nozzle has to travel and how fast it moves throughout the print.
Since phone stands are usually small and don’t need a ton of plastic, they usually weigh around 15 to 30 grams. Most printers can knock one out in under an hour once everything’s set up right. Between free community-made designs and slicing software doing the heavy lifting, anyone with a 3D printer can skip buying this stuff from a store and just make their own instead, way faster and cheaper than you’d expect.
The plastic you choose makes a big difference
You will probably ruin a few prints at first
The plastic you choose makes a big difference. PLA is the go-to for beginners because it’s forgiving to print with and pretty strong when you pull on it, but it’s brittle, and it gets soft starting around 130 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you print, say, a phone mount out of PLA and leave it in a hot car, don’t be surprised if it warps.
If you want something tougher, you’ll usually move up to PETG, which holds up better to impacts and has some flex, or ABS, which handles heat way better but is a pain because it shrinks a lot as it cools, causing warping.
That warping is actually one of the most annoying problems you’ll run into. As a layer cools, it shrinks unevenly, and that shrinking pulls the corners of your print right up off the build plate. If your first layer doesn’t go down right, the whole print is doomed. You’ll come back hours later to a tangled mess instead of a finished part, which means you’ve wasted both filament and time.
So to avoid that, you really have to dial in your settings and your printer’s calibration. Getting your Z-offset right matters a lot, since it controls how firmly the nozzle presses the first layer onto the bed. Keeping your build plate spotless also helps a ton. Wash it with dish soap, then wipe it down with isopropyl alcohol to remove any oils that can mess with adhesion.
In your slicer settings, you’ll want to turn off the cooling fan for the first few layers so the plastic has a chance to settle and adhere properly before air hits it.
Don’t waste your money on a premium stand again
None of this works without some patience. You’ll waste a print or two figuring out your bed adhesion, and PLA won’t survive a hot car, no matter how careful you are with your settings. If you want something that withstands real heat or impact, you’re looking at PETG or ABS, and both come with their own calibration headaches. For something you’ll replace or redesign more than once, though, that math is hard to argue with.
- Build Volume
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220mm x 220mm x 250mm
- Materials Used
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PLA, ABS, TPU, and PETG
- Brand
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Creality
- Extruder Quantity
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Single
With its user-friendly interface and menu system, the Creality Ender 3 V2 is another excellent starter 3D printer. Users can easily navigate its menus and settings on the color 4.3-inch screen using the rotary dial. However, it doesn’t come ready to go. It requires some assembly, and if you don’t want to do the 2–3 hours of set-up time, you may be better off purchasing a pre-built printer. It also has a manual bed leveler, which you can master with practice and patience. However, curious newbies going through these inconveniences can learn a little about the mechanics of their new machines. If you do encounter problems, a large online community, including active Facebook groups, is waiting to help. The direct-drive extruder offers beginners easy maintenance, accurate printing, and better filament control. Additionally, the Effortless Filament-Feed-In Feature reduces any risk of tangling or improper loading. The filament run-out sensor and resume-printing functions are also handy features for novices.
