Make a Nexus 4 dock on a Makerbot Replicator

Jan.29, 2013

The official orb-shaped charger for the new Google Nexus 4 smartphone appeared in Norwegian retailer Dustin Home for pre-order in January 17th. The estimated shipping date is Feb. 12, 2013. The price is 739 kr /$114 USD, plus Norwegian VAT at 25% to be added on this price - bit expensive.

Thingiverse user Micah Ganske didn't want to wait any longer to get an official dock, so he made his own in Blender.

It doesn't have cool wireless charging, but you don't have to F5 the Play store page into oblivion to order one so that's a plus!

There are two versions of the dock, one scaled for a naked N4 and one for an N4 with official bumper. I have a bumper (lucky me, I know), so I've only printed one for the bumper but the naked dock should work too.

Ganske uploaded a Nexus4Docknaked.stl and a Nexus4DockwithBumper.stl file to Thingiverse. He notes that you can print at whatever layer height you want, as a reference, his model is printed at 0.15mm layer thickness on a Makerbot Replicator.

Ganske then added a standard USB cable for charging and some stick-on hobby weights on the inside of the dock to give a weight to it. The coolest thing is, he added a personal assistant: an NFC sticker to trigger NFC Task Launcher (available on Google Play). "I found that if you set the sticker to turn on "Car Dock" you can get Daydream mode to turn on when you dock."

To make one for your own, check the files and instructions on Thingiverse.