A fold-flat MagSafe dock: four prototypes for three problems

MagSafe is Apple's wireless charging for the iPhone: no plug to line up, no hunting for the port. For me it made little difference. The phone still lies flat on the desk, unusable while it charges, and the charging power is not high.

No, I did not design a tilted dock

To be useful the phone should sit up at an angle. Then I can work, watch something, follow a tutorial, all while it charges. But I was not going to design a tilted dock. Too many people need exactly that, and there are plenty of commercial products already. With a 3D printer the choice opens up even further.

I own one of those; its side even charges AirPods. But I have a need none of them serve: portability. I change where I work all the time: home, the office, outdoors, the occasional trip. A dock like this is not something I want to carry.

Break the inconvenience down and there are three parts:

• Size. Most docks are sizeable in all three dimensions, so they sit badly in a backpack or a bag.
• The cable. Docks are designed to stay on a desk; to carry one you end up winding the cable around something.
• One more thing to remember on the way out.

Problem 1: size

The trouble with the commercial docks is not that they are too big. It is that they are big in all three dimensions, length, width and height, and that is what makes them awkward in a bag.

This is the first prototype, inspired by a cassette tape: it folds flat to lose one dimension, so it slips into a bag. But I had not paid attention to its overall size, and next to the phone it was far too large.

For prototype 2 I cut the dimensions down deliberately and rounded it to soften it. One part could not shrink, because it is what the lid latches onto when the dock is open. Not perfect, but this version solved problem 1: one dimension gone, easy to bag.

Problem 2: the cable

The first idea was four cable clips in the base: when you are done, clip the cable in, route it out through the hole, and put it away. As you can see, winding it was a struggle, awkward and unnatural, and the cable kept jamming the lid when it closed.

To improve it I asked myself which winding motion I find most comfortable. It is this: hold the charger in the left hand and wind the cable around it. So I designed a winding spindle on the left, and all you do is wind around it.

After winding, the end hooks in at the side. Still not right: hooking it there takes a certain dexterity and is not convenient. Best would be a catch on the face itself, so you wind and clip straight onto it.

That settled two things: the cable, and the fold.

A pause to judge it

Time to stop and look: it looks bad. Beyond the colours, which were still rough, the design looked odd:

• The bump was originally there to hold the lid and the cable end when they were clipped out. Now the cable is held at the back, so it should go.
• The rounding was meant to soften the shape, but it has nothing to do with the cassette I was aiming at.
• The plain face was dull.

So, prototype 4. New colours. The curves became straight lines, closer to the cassette idea. A window, so the MagSafe inside shows even with the lid closed. And the outer bump is gone. The whole thing is tidier, better looking, and much closer to the concept.

Problem 3: forgetting it

With the hole in the corner I only have to hook the dock onto an accessory I always carry, and then it can never be left behind.

To finish it I added a few small details, which hide the flaws of 3D printing and give the design its accents, and a few magnets so the dock holds itself together better.

The dock

This is my MagSafe dock. It does what I needed: it folds flat to travel, the cable winds up neatly inside, and there is a hook so an accessory can hang on it and nothing gets forgotten.

If you were going to ask why I did not add MagSafe for AirPods: I always keep my AirPods in a case, and with the case on they cannot charge on MagSafe. I think most people are the same, so I will never design MagSafe for AirPods. Instead the dock has a Type-C cable port, and the AirPods charge from the iPhone itself while it sits on MagSafe.

Of course I was not going to leave the cable dangling. I designed a small part the plug clips into, which then hangs on the dock's hook. The cable becomes the dock's strap: the strap is the charging cable.

If you think the cassette was the inspiration: it was, in the design and the colours. And more than that: the dock plays music. It has a slot for an NFC card; each song is a card, and sliding the card in plays that song.

Almost forgot: inside the dock there is also a small box, sized for two music cards.

That is the MagSafe dock I designed.

The files are on MakerWorld: makerworld.com — Foldable MagSafe Dock with NFC music cards