I just bought myself a new iPhone 3GS. To protect my all to expensive new toy, I also purchased a nice hard case (Griffen Elan Form). I was dissapointed to find that the iPhone shipped with only a USB cable, no dock. As it turns out, docks cost $50, and I would have to take off the hard case in order to use it.

I decided I could rig up a dock for a fraction of the cost, and without a huge time investment. Here is what I came up with.

The dock itself is made out of a 0.062" sheet of 3000 series aluminum. The actual design took me 15 seconds on a post-it-note, but I have recreated it in Solidworks, properly dimensioned. Suffice to say that it is 3 inches wide, and 9 inches long when unbent. I work at a company with a machine shop, so fabricating it was easy. I cut the dock to size on a sheet metal cutting press, cut the hole for the dock connector with a 1/4" mill bit, rounded the corners with a power sander, and bent the dock into shape with a bending press.

Although I had plenty of tools, this same dock could be built with basic hand tools and a power drill, if you are willing to invest the time. If you don't have metal working equipment, I would recommend using thinner steel sheet instead of thick aluminum. This will be easier to bend into shape.

Now that I had my basic metal piece, I polished it up nicely, and stuck a couple of no-skid rubber feet on the bottom from an old keyboard sitting in my recycle bin. I got together the pieces necessary to complete the dock:

I have a dock, an old iPod USB cable, a zip tie, a glue gun, and my iPhone for test fitting.

The new iPhone cable has a stubbier dock connector with no latching mechanism. My older iPod cable has the longer connector with the latches. Since I don't want my dock to latch, I needed to disable this feature. I took a zip tie, and tighened it around the two latch buttons. This keeps them depressed, and allows the iPhone to freely connect and disconnect, just like the newer cables. Its ugly, but it will be hidden underneath the dock.

Using hot glue, I then attached the dock cable to the hole in my metal dock. I angled it so that the iPhone rests against the back while docked. I also stuck it up about an eighth of an inch, so that it would reach my iPhone through the thick case.

I used hot glue because it dries fast, and it is removable. This turned out to be important as I had to tweak the positioning of the dock connector a few times. Once I had it exactly right, I put on lots of glue to hold it firmly in place.

For the finished product, I taped down the cable with clear packing tape, so that the dock connector isn't yanked lose accidently.

I actually like the style of the finished product. With the minimalist aluminum styling, it seems a lot more "Apple-like" than the dinky square white boxes that Apple sells as docks.

Total time spent: 1.5 hours

Total costs: $0 (already had the aluminum and old USB cable)