Introduction: Floppy Disk Phone Dock

About: I have struggled to come up with a label that accurately describes what I do creatively. Some days I’m a musician, some days an artist. I like to play guitars and synthesisers. I like taking photos, but genera…
This is my take on a phone dock made out of 3.5" floppy disks.

I wanted this to be a sturdy, clean make, I only wanted whole disks to be used and no glue.

For this make you will need
  • 4 floppy disks
  • 8 cable ties
  • scissors
  • Drill and 3 or 4mm drill bit
  • sticky tack/bluetack
  • sharp knife
  • ruler
  • pen
This should take you about 30 minutes.

Step 1: Setting Up and Marking Out

in this design there will be two side pieces, a base piece and a back piece. Figure out which of your 4 disks you want to use in which position.

Generally I try to hide the existing labels because they are a swine to remove and I don't have spares to overlay. I kind of like the handwritten labels (although in this make I'm using a disk with 'bereavement leaflet' written on it which is not so cool).

Laying out the side pieces, offer up the long edge of the base piece across the short width of the side piece. The difference between the lengths gives a really good indication of the best angle for the base. Line it up so the edges of the base floppy lines up with the edges of the side piece and trace a line with a pen.

Do this for the other side piece, ensuring the marked line is a mirror image of the first piece.

Step 2: Pre-assembly

 place some sticky tack at each end of the marked lines and fix the base piece in place on one of the side pieces.

Now sticky tack the back piece into position, I have tried to put it just behind the sliding metal cover of the base piece at right angles to it (although the actual angle depends on what angle you want your phone at)

Fix the second side piece into position with sticky tack. Frankly you could stop here, if you wanted, because this is strong enough to hold most phones and if it isn't then add more sticky tack!

I wanted something more secure however so... onwards!

Step 3: Marking Up for Drilling

whilst stuck together like this, mark up where you need to make connections.

Each of the side pieces will need 3 new holes
the back piece will need four new holes as will the base piece

refer to photo with four disks for exact positions

Step 4: The Base Piece

Take the base piece and carefully remove the sliding gate using a knife and make sure you don't lose the spring as you take it apart.

again using the knife carefully split the casing and remove the inner disc. It is possible to do this without breaking the casing just by gently prising it apart.

snap the sliding gate back into place and reinsert the spring, which is not essential but its a nice touch. The gate should slide easily to and fro, with the spring it should snap easily back into position.

We have removed the inner disc so that we can feed a charging/docking cable through the gates hole.

Step 5: Assembly

Use the cable ties to connect all the pieces together, starting with the back and base pieces. keep the cable ties loose until all the pieces are connected.

Once you are happy with the positions of all the pieces, start tightening the cable ties. Cable ties are excellent for this because they are easily positioned and adjusted whilst tightening

Step 6: The Finished Article

the finished article is quite sturdy with enough flexibility to allow some adjustment in case it doesn't sit completely flat on a surface.

I'd be interested to see how this works with base charging phones like the iphone, but I don't have one so if anyone makes this for theirs, do let me know how it turns out.

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