This Fella 3D-Printed an iPhone

Apple’s industrial design under Jony Ive was, without exaggeration, legendary. A century from now, college kids will be studying his design philosophy and debating whether or not he simply copied Dieter Rams. Material choice has always been a major factor in that design philosophy, with aluminum sitting all pretty and brushed on the highest pedestal. Sadly, not many makers have CNC mills capable of producing aluminum iPhone shells and that is why Strange Parts designed a 3D-printable version.

You see, a couple of weeks ago Strange Parts posted a video in which he reverse-engineered and CNC-milled an aluminum iPhone enclosure. That was a neat project and the results were pretty good from the Makera Carvera desktop CNC mill Strange Parts used for job. But the Carvera costs $5,199 at the moment, which puts it far outside the budgets of most makers. That pill is especially hard to swallow for experienced machinists that know that a desktop mill like the Carvera is only good for very light duty work.

3D printers, on the other hand, are relatively affordable and plentiful. The US Census Bureau won’t return my calls on the matter, but I’m willing to bet that most of our readers at least have access to a 3D printer. Strange Part’s new design takes advantage of that fact and gives everyone the ability to make an iPhone enclosure.

Strange Parts already reverse-engineered the iPhone enclosure in the last video, but that CAD work was only a little bit useful for this new design. Thermoplastics and aluminum have very different properties, while 3D printers and CNC mills have very different capabilities. Strange Parts needed the new design to not only be suitable for 3D printing, but also to be approachable to the typical maker.

For just one example, consider the screws that hold the internal components onto the back shell. With aluminum, you could tap the shell directly to add threads. But 3D prints don’t always take taps well or hold up to the torque of screws. Strange Parts experimented with a few solutions, including embedding an entire metal backing plate into the shell. Ultimately, however, he chose to use everyone’s favorite 3D printing fasteners: heat-set threaded inserts. Those are itty bitty, but they don’t have to be very strong and they seemed to work well for this application.

You can learn more details about the design process in the video and you can get the 3D files from the Strange Parts Patreon if you want to make print your own.