I got my Printrbot simple about 6 months ago, and love it. Ever since I have got it I have been trying to figure out something cool to make. Last week I saw an ad for an iPhone stencil made out of metal, and thought is was pretty sweet http://www.uistencils.com/products/iphone-stencil-kit. I thought to myself hey I have a 3d printer, I can make things like this! I download things from thingiverse all the time how hard could it be! Well it wasn’t easy and I’m sure there are better ways of doing this. If you enjoy this awesomeness please follow me on twitter and leave a comment bellow! I’m always looking for friends online, and love to talk about mobile dev and other cool stuff, so follow me already! Follow @BarrettBreshear



Download the .STL file:

(I suffered so you don’t have to)

iphone.stl

Create an iPhone stencil

First thing I did was download a picture of an iPhone 5s and open it in photoshop.

Next remove everything we don’t need in the image and save it as a png.



Next I used a program called sketch up where can be downloaded here: http://www.sketchup.com/ . Open your png in sketch up and trace the entire image using the line and arch tools. This is the really lame part and takes forever. Once the image is outlined use the push/pull tool to give the selection thickness. Once you have something you like export it as an stl file and you are ready to print!

Finally open you .stl file in your perfered 3d printing program. I use Repetier with my Printerbot simple. Send the print job to your printer and that it! Unless you are terrible at configuring your printer and it takes like 20 print attempts to figure out why your printer isn’t doing what you want and you really start to wonder why you even bought the dang machine in the first place.

So I couldn’t get my printer to work like I wanted to and modified the object to be only a couple of layers. It turned out pretty good. My PrintrBot simple only has a 100 mm x 100 mm x 100 mmx print area so the stencil isn’t actually to size but I am always writing my app ideas down in a note book I have and I actually like the smaller size to save space.