This is a simple ‘flat pack’ style plywood phone stand that you can make with your CNC router today. The design is a modified version of a laser cut design from scooterdup on the Glowforge community forums. I have modified the design to work better on a hobby CNC router machine. The stock material for this phone stand is 3mm birch faced plywood.
Making this design on a CNC router means you don’t have the black and burned edges that you get making this type of product using a laser cutter.
The design file is available to download here as an SVG file. The advantage of an SVG file is that it will work great in Easel. Also, If you want to make and design changes, for example changing the overall size, slot or the pose angle then it’s easy to do in Easel or Inkscape.
Import the SVG into Easel
I am using Easel as it’s really easy to get tool paths defined very quickly and can also act as the machine controller for Minimillr CNC routers. The free version of Easel has all the functionality you need for this project.
You need to setup up an account to use Easel, so if you don’t have one then set one up here.
Import the SVG and select the two outlines. Set the cut depth to 3mm, cutting outside the path. Make sure to select and add Tabs unless your hold stock down method doesn’t need then.
Cut and Feed Settings
For this project I used a 3mm twin flute straight bit so a little cleanup with sandpaper will be required. The feed rate was an easygoing 250mm/sec as I set it to cut the full 3mm in one pass. You can probably go a lot faster with good results depending on your setup. Plunge speed was 200mm/sec. Spindle RPMs are not to big a concern here so anything 7-10K range or higher will be absolutely fine.
CNC Routing
Make sure the stock is held down securely and zero the spindle where you want the part to be cut out. You can use a secondary piece of ply as wasteboard to protect the machine bed if needed.
The End Result
The final result is a neat little CNC plywood phone stand. It can be flat packed for slipping into a laptop bag etc. With a little but of modification you can improve the cable management, customize the width/height or add custom features such as a monogram or logo.
