Car Vent Phone Mount - 1998-2002 Honda Accord by jonle

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Introduction
The Car Vent Phone Mount is all in the name. Only recently have cars come equipped with Bluetooth and CarPlay, so the CVPM is the perfect, low-cost improvement to your driving experience by making your phone easy to see and use. Great for delivery drivers, anyone using GPS, and for listening to music.
Works with Face ID!
Safety first
Don't drive distracted. Minimize phone use by using hands-free, voice-activated features like Hey Siri and Dictation. Enable Do Not Disturb While Driving so that fewer notifications pop up on the display. If you have the iPhone X or later, consider turning off the Require Attention for Face ID setting so you can keep your eyes on the road.
Design
I loved tc_fea's "car air vent mount for Iphone 6 plus" project, but I wanted to try making it better for my 2000 Honda Accord's centre-left vent.
My design constraints were:
98-02 Honda Accord
Official Apple Lightning cable (charging and audio)
One-handed use
iPhone Plus (no case; I live on the wild side)
Not blocking the air vent
Since my needs were so specific, I really customized the design. As I browsed the different fundamental car phone mounts on Thingiverse, it became abundantly clear that everybody's preference is different. Some use CD slots for their mounts, some go wireless, some like a looser fit. Plus, everyone's grilles are different, and it took me almost a dozen iterations to find the fit that I liked. I really considered making the design more appealing to a wider audience, but there isn't even a Honda group on Thingiverse where I can share this design. That freed me up to make things just the way I wanted.
Installation
Point the vent as low as possible.
Slide the lower arm underneath the bottom vent grille.
Then point the vent as high as possible while simultaneously pushing the mount inwards. This final step will make the top arm snap into place.
Roll Your Own CVPM
It's been relatively painless designing this project for iPhones, but there have been limitations as far as other smartphones go, even iPhones with cases. I remade the Car Vent Phone Mount in OnShape, so any user can copy it and customize it to their own phone. With their free account, all designs are open to the public, so feel free to copy it and customize it for your personal, non-commercial uses.
To copy the project, make a free OnShape account, open the link, select the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select "Copy Workspace."
OnShape - Car Vent Phone Mount - iPhone Plus
If you end up making a new CVPM model for different phones, please share them on Thingiverse and link back using the Remix function!
Updates
2019-10-27: Welp, it's taken almost an entire year for me to update this project, but I finally got around to making the model for the iPhone XR, which also includes the iPhone 11 now. Remade the Xs file to fit the slightly larger 11 Pro, so now that file works with 11 Pro, XS, and X. The iPhone 11 Pro Max will still fit the existing iPhone Plus model, so reuploaded it with a new filename to reduce confusion; goodbye, download count. I also happened to discover that the iPhone 8 file was not up to my standards, so I updated that as well, which should work with the 8, 7, 6s, and 6. I'm not sure if anyone had any issues with that file specifically since I never got any messages or comments, so please let me know if any of the updated files from today have any issues. The STL previews are not exactly aligned anymore because of how troublesome Thingiverse's system is, so if you want to see what they look like, you'll have to download them.
Alas, for you new iPhone 11/Pro/Max users, I'm not jelly at all, and I hope you enjoy your new phones!
2018-10-28: Added link to OnShape project.
2018-10-24: Added iPhone SE model. Redesigned it from my previous lazy version, which had a lot of extra material relative to the SE's much smaller frame. Added a new cover photo.
2018-10-18: Added iPhone XS model. Just realized that the iPhone Max and Plus are really close in size, under 1 mm difference in all three axes, so you should be able to use the same file. Re-uploading the same Plus model with a new name.
2018-10-16: Added iPhone 8/7/6s/6 model.
2018-10-15: Updated iPhone Plus model. After my previous dock softened over the summer and fell off the vent, I printed new ones twice but accidentally broke them because the design wasn't super rigid against the process of removing the big chunk of supports. Added stabilizing bars to both break up the supports in the vent through hole and to stiffen the overall mount. Now it's rock solid, no more wiggling whatsoever, which is better than I could have imagined. Changed the way the Lightning connector is inserted, and there are only two cable hooks now so that you loop it in a circle. I also flipped it so that the left side prints at the top. Since we drive on the left in Canada, wherever the model prints on top of the supports, it will now face away from the driver's side. At some point in the distant future I'll update the other models and add some for the new iPhones too, Xs Max and Xr.
2018-03-13: Added models for iPhone 8/7/6s/6 and iPhone SE/5s/5. Untested so far, including the X, but I will try them out now that I have them uploaded.
2018-03-12: Added preliminary iPhone X model.
2018-03-01: I'm transferring the design over from TinkerCAD to Fusion360. Sooo much easier to work with, so I'm making a few changes. This update isn't final as I'm still figuring out how to implement some old ideas with the new software since it's so much more powerful, but alas, there were a few problems in the last design that I simply wasn't happy with once I had to replace my stolen mount. Expect another update within the next few weeks as I keep testing in my own car, but for now, please accept this little update. Securing the cable should be easier, and should fit the official 1 m cable. I was using the 0.5 m cable before, which has a smaller connector body and jacket, but now it'll fit the wider connector of the 1 m. Audio ports are now wide open; I wasn't happy with removing supports from such tiny holes. Changed the slopes of the mounting arms to 45 degrees to remove the need for supports. Only updating the Plus version of the design for now, but I hope to add support for the 4.7" and the iPhone X. Maybe with Fusion360, it'll be easier to add versions for phones with cases as well.
2017-12-30: Apparently this dock is so nice that when my car got broken into a few weeks back, the only thing they took was the dock and the cable.
2017-01-17: Added new version for iPhone 4.7" size! It's untested. Added new iPhone Plus with slightly wider grip. Made the sidewalls thicker, iPhone corners rounder, and slightly increased the size of the Lightning connector holes.
2016-12-26: Added ports for speaker and microphone, fixed some small symmetry discrepancies.