How I Made My Own iPhone from a Block of Aluminum
- I want to turn this block of aluminum into an iPhone. (upbeat music) I just want to be done with this part of the project. This sucks. I've never been so upset and happy at the same time! Ever since I made my own iPhone from parts I bought in the markets in China a number of years ago, I've been asking myself, what if we could completely redesign the iPhone? Not just something off an assembly line, but something that was unique to each of us.
What if we could truly think different? We can build our own custom PCs like this one, handpick every part, making them look however we want. Why can't we do the same with our phones? I wanna take the first small step towards that dream. I wanna make my own iPhone enclosure. If only I could get my hands on the official drawings. This isn't stolen. Apple actually releases this publicly for companies making cases and accessories, but it only shows the outside of the phone.
The inside, this is gonna be the real challenge. How do you even measure tiny details like this? And I'm no master machinist. But I got something a year ago that's making me reconsider. They sent me this Carvera mill to try out. It's small and it's more suited to wood and circuit boards than aluminum phone chassis, but I think it might be mightier than it seems. Let's just do a quick drawing of the outside of this based on the Apple accessory guidelines.
They give you all of the information about the radius here. (mellow music) So now I have to tell the tool how to carve this out. I just wanna see a couple things. Can we cut this at all? What kind of surface finishes do we get? Can it do these thin walls on the shell? Oh, it's only a millimeter.
Let's create a quick sketch here. Okay, so that I think is like, the minimum viable iPhone shell just for testing this on the mill. This gives us a tool pad that this is gonna go around.
I think the goal is gonna be to have it leave all the stuff in the middle, but I'll at least get the edges and the outside walls so that I can get a sense of whether this is even possible. (energetic music) (music continues) (machine whirring) (vacuum hissing) That looks really good. It's not perfect, but man, that is not a bad first attempt. I really like how this is looking. There are some marks here where the tool is going in and out and I think I know how to fix that.
Looking at the inside here, it's not bad. This is gonna work. I wanna do another one of these and fix all of the errors that I had.
Once I figure out how to carve this out is how do I flip it over and do the backside? I'm gonna try and build a vacuum fixture that is the exact size and shape of it that it can sit in and then suck it down with a vacuum pump. (mellow music) I'm gonna mill this out of acetal bar. It's a plastic that's supposedly good for machining. So I'm gonna get this fixtured in here, give this a shot.
(mellow music) It's gonna go this way. Oh, that's really good! Moves around a little bit. I'm gonna make another version that's a little bit of a tighter fit so I'm sure that the aluminum doesn't move around at all and I know exactly where it is. Right! It's tight. That fits.
So I gotta put a hole in it now for the vacuum port. I'll be back. Got that hole in there. All right. (pump rumbling) Yep, it's holding a vacuum.
(upbeat music) (music continues) That looks really good. The thin walls are totally doable. I wasn't sure about that.
Could get a better surface finish. They look very, very similar. This is gonna work. This mill is totally capable of making an iPhone.
I guess I gotta move on to the hard part, which is the inside. All these little screws, all the profiles along the edge here. See all those cut-ins? This I think is where a lot of the real work is gonna be.
There are no drawings. I guess I'm gonna have to measure 'em myself. This is not the best. There's some things that aren't lining up. What if I take a picture of this? It's lined up but it's not lined up because I'm not totally perpendicular. What if I used a flatbed scanner and just put this like, face down on the scanner.
I think it's time to go to the store. Ew. That's a problem. The only things that are sharp are things actually touching the glass. Let's try a high res scan.
Okay, we got high resolution. Those edges look great, and this is totally useless. So anything that touches the glass is perfectly in focus. What if I stick a shell like this housing in the mill and mill it down layer by layer and then stick this back on the scanner, scan it, and I get essentially a bunch of slices of this thing at different heights? I have a sacrificial back to use here that's all busted up. (mill humming) (machines humming) I think this is working. Be back when I've got all the layers done.
(bright music) (machines humming) (music continues) So it took me longer than I would like to admit, but I finally have all of these different layer images aligned with each other. So you can see I've got the layers labeled by their heights so I know at a given height what the architecture of the case is. And I'm gonna use this to draw all of the internals. I think this is gonna be a lot of work. (energetic music) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) That took me way longer than I expected, but I'm pretty happy with where this design is at. I think it's time to try it on the mill.
(energetic music continues) (music continues) (music continues) Oh, that looks really good. Oh, I'm excited. So I think the next thing I need to do is figure out all of these little screw mounts on the inside. I think this back plate here is actually spot welded on here, and then they've spot welded on all of the individual screw mounts. I can't find these threaded inserts anywhere. The other option is to use the world's tiniest tap, like a drill bit that cuts the threads into a pre-drilled hole.
What I wanna do is just do a test on a test chunk of aluminum. All right. I gotta put a set screw in the side of this. All right, I think I got it. I'm gonna put this in the hole that I want to tap. And then I'm gonna have the CNC mill hold this, and then it will be perfectly positioned and then I can spin this by hand very, very carefully.
Oh my god, it totally works. Dude! Oh, that's awesome. I love it when a plan comes together. (mellow music) (vacuum hissing) Time to thread these holes, which I'm a little nervous about. You might be asking, why am I using the CNC mill to do a manual tap? And the reason is I'm using this spring loaded thing here to hold the tap perfectly vertical over the hole so I don't break it by snapping it off. Super happy with the way all these internals have come out.
I'm dying to see if all the parts fit, so let's go upstairs. (laughing) Look at that! Perfect fit. Are these screws in the right place? Perfect fit.
Battery goes here. Flash. Back cameras, oh, those fit like a glove! This is starting to feel like a real phone, it's starting to look like a real phone.
I am so excited. Okay, so, oh. I've been ignoring these for a while. There are some undercuts here and here and up here. In this particular case, this cover that holds the back camera in slides into these slots.
And that's what holds down this side, and this side is held by screws. I gotta figure out how to machine these. The problem is you can't get to that from above with the CNC mill because it's an underhang. I guess I could put this at an angle and try and come in this way. But I think there are some specialty bits out there, sort of like a disc on the end of a shaft so that you can come in this way and then come in from the side and carve that out.
(mellow music) Alright, let's give this a shot. I have another case that I've milled that doesn't have the weird screw ups I had before. I've got my one of the $360 bits here. I'm gonna try my very best not to break this. (mill whirring) That went way better than I could have possibly hoped for. This is the thing I was really worried about, and it's going really well.
(mellow music) Next I need to mill these side holes. (music continues) (mill humming) (music continues) (tools clacking) Time to try it out on the mill. What I really need to be able to do is register the machine to this exact corner. I have this thing, so you could like, put it right here and have it probe on the inside of here and it gives you XY probing.
If I align this to that corner, it should be good. Here goes nothing. (mill whirring) Dang it! Okay, well that sucks, but this is why we have extra bits. Fingers crossed. (mill whirring) Dang it! Okay, I need a new strategy. I think what I might do is lower the speed even more.
(mill whirring) Okay. Add this to my pile of dead bodies here. I figured out the problem. So I hadn't had multiple depths turned on, and it's taking everything at like a single pass cut, and that's way too much for this tiny little bit.
So I'm gonna risk one more of my two remaining bits. (mill whirring) There we go. Oh, that was the problem, I was cutting too deep.
(mellow music) This is 2.51 versus 2.4. I think we can deal with that. Well, the next step is gonna be to flip this over and mill the left side. (music continues) (mill whirring) This looks great. I think the next step here is to do the bottom. (music continues) (tools clacking) That looks pretty good.
This fixture is designed to replace the bed. We're working at the very upper limit of this machine. I hope this works. (mellow music continues) Oh, that looks really good. And the inside looks good.
We've got all the outside holes done. So the last thing we need is all of these inside screw holes all along here. I'm thinking maybe holding it at an angle, having it come in this way. I just pulled up SketchUp here. It's gonna be like this and the head's gonna be coming in like this.
A cutout here for the phone. We need some braces to hold this at the right angle down here, like a base plate. Let me CAD that up for real with like, actual dimensions and things. (upbeat music) So let's load up our angled fixture here, replace this one and see how this goes.
This is the thing I feel least confident about in this whole project right now. We've hit our first issue. And I remember now that when I measured this I had measured it taking off this air mount thing here.
The other thing I can't remember is what did I have planned for this black knob? This is not gonna work with the black knob here. That's now getting in the way. Manufacturer's probably rolling in their grave right about now. Okay, sweet, I think we've got plenty of clearance now. Here goes nothing. (mill whirring) It's about 30 millimeters.
I think I also put my good shell in there, which was a mistake. I should've put this one in. It's successful in that we made a hole, but not in the right spot. Yeah, we're off by like, millimeters. That hole should be a few millimeters over.
I really need a way to probe the fixture. Crap. (mellow music) (music continues) Here's my problem. I need to know precisely where the phone is relative to the rest of the CNC mill. What we did before which really worked was this X, Y, Z probe thing, but it was when the fixtures were all right angles and vertical. If I can put this here and know that it's more or less parallel to the bottom, then I'll be in pretty good shape.
Hmm, okay, so here's another tricky thing. Because I'm milling one side and then flipping it and milling the other side, I really wanna be able to do it on one of these corners and not the back corners, but it needs to be a right angle for this to catch. I have milled a new version of this. That'll work.
What we might be hitting is that the machine just physically can't go any lower. I think I'm done for today. Gotta get a longer bit.
This is just agonizing! Okay, I got our long reach mills here. This is $300 worth of mills with next day shipping. (mill whirring) That'll work! Oh, and I broke it.
I went one too far. Well, it was $65, but it works! (laughing maniacally) Ah, well that's this project in a nutshell. Geez.
Ugh! But we got an angled hole. (laughing) It's there. I've never been so upset and happy at the same time. Okay, I'm gonna try milling the other side. Moving very, very slowly, which is good.
And it just broke. Dang it! All right, got two more end mill bits. I'm gonna run this as slow as pretty much humanly possible with a very high RPM. (mill whirring) Yes! That is a huge relief.
I guess next I have to figure out whether I can thread it. It's getting caught in weird ways in here that makes me think it is not perfectly round. I have switched the way I want to do the threaded holes 'cause they're just not working out the way I wanted them to. I'm actually gonna drill holes for threaded inserts. (mill whirring) That looks great! Yeah, I'm pretty pleased.
I can declare victory on this particular setup. So there need to be pockets where these holes are here for the speakers. I cut through the bottom so something's messed up, but those pockets look really good. (pensive music) It is finally time to move on. I'm gonna tackle the sidewalls here.
Oh, I'm so excited. (energetic music) All right, that looks pretty good. So I made this little glue fixture here to hold the threaded inserts on the end. (music continues) I like the way that looks. I wanna put a logo here. (music continues) (music continues) Pretty lovely.
I do need to mill out the camera holes here. (music continues) (music continues) So the buttons are integrated with the charging coil on this. But because I have made an all-aluminum back, the charging coil's not gonna work.
I think I can just remove the wireless charging coil. (music continues) Ho ho, okay! Let's do buttons. (music continues) That's pretty clickey. (button clicking) (music continues) Gosh, this is fitting together so well. I mean, there's a few minor issues, but geez.
(music continues) I need to mill the little plastic window that goes over the 5G antenna slot. I'm tired, I'm ready. I have three more days before I have to move out of this workshop.
No more unexpected problems. (music continues) (music continues) That looks pretty good. (music continues) Boy, that is looking nice. (music continues) (music continues) I think I've got this pretty darn good at this point, but it's really soft so I'm gonna cover it in some gaff tape to avoid scratching it up.
What color buttons are going down here? Silver I think is kind of obvious. Yeah, I mean, it's fine. It's just kind of boring. Could do black.
Or, it's kind of sexy and it is the Strange Parts color, let's go red. We are not putting the parts that I've been testing with in here, because they are of dubious quality at this point. I have a used iPhone 12, so I'm gonna basically move all of the parts from here into the finished phone.
This is the battery there. Now the screen can move out of the way. And now we're ready to disassemble the rest of the phone. (upbeat music) (music continues) (music continues) We have to put on the camera covers. There's this raised piece of glass, which I haven't modeled. I'm going to superglue the ring on this to just have it protrude a little bit.
(music continues) (music continues) All the parts in, moment of truth. Does it turn on? Hey-hey! (laughing) Turns on. There we go.
(laughing) Look at that! It is indeed 1:41 in the morning. I have one more day before I have to move out. That is pretty satisfying. Amazingly, it seems to be on the wifi, which I didn't think this was gonna get any reception. I'm gonna have to put a SIM card in it, but.
So because it doesn't have the antenna lines, it's one solid piece of metal, I thought none of the wireless stuff was gonna work. But believe it or not, it loads Google. That's been a long time in the making. It's been pretty close to a year since I started this project.
Probably 11 months. There you go, finished phone. And with that, I'm gonna call it a night. (mellow music) (music continues) Well, it's definitely possible.
You can make your own iPhone from a block of aluminum. I do wish I had another week in the shop to make one more version of this. There's a bunch of things I've learned in finishing this that I would do differently, but I'm pretty happy with how this came out.
This is pretty awesome. I didn't know if this was gonna be possible. It's amazing how many tiny little details didn't seem like a big deal until they were. And particularly on the outside of the phone, things like the buttons being clickey and like, little details around the switch, things that wouldn't be that hard to fix, but you know, I just need a little bit more time. It's amazing how much those tiny little details change the look and feel of the phone in your hand. And this is just the beginning.
This is just a stepping stone to something much, much bigger. It's a first step towards a world where anybody can make their own phone and customize it however they like. And now that I have a basic design with all the right dimensions and the screws in all the right places, I can start modifying things.
I can make phones outta different materials and in different shapes, I can make it thicker or longer or change the way the corners feel. But I can also add new features much more easily without worrying about how I'm gonna cram everything into the existing phone. Broken two screens in the past 24 hours.
And they're just being too smashed, I think, by the headphone jack. We are starting a revolution. Owning your devices doesn't just mean being able to hold it in your hand, it's being able to repair it, modify it, and make it your own. Now if you're anything like me, you're probably saying to yourself, "I really wanna make my own," and I'm gonna help you do just that.
Stick around all the way to the end of the video to find out how. But first, let's talk about the mill I used for this project, the Carvera, made by the Chinese startup Makera. I was initially skeptical, but after spending hundreds of hours with it now, I'm a huge fan. When the original sponsor of this video fell through, I reached out to Josh, the CEO of Makera, and he graciously agreed to sponsor it, which is a great fit because this whole video happens to use the Carvera. Now this isn't a cheap, generic Chinese desktop CNC mill that requires tons of additional work and money to get good results, nor is it a massive industrial mill for production CNC shops. It's a desktop mill designed for makers to work right outta the box with features you'd expect on much larger, more expensive machines.
It includes a six position automatic tool changer so you don't have to change the tools AKA the bits yourself, which is a huge time saver on complex projects. I used 21 different tools in the final version of the iPhone shell. Now the wireless Z height probe here charges wirelessly and communicates via Bluetooth automatically. This is crucial for making circuit boards, adjusting for the uneven PCB material, similar to how 3D printers do bed leveling.
Other features include the integrated dust collection, a five watt diode laser for engraving, and an optional fourth axis module. It comes with a great set of fixtures for holding your work down. And honestly, a fantastic set of tutorial projects to get familiar with using the machine. It's rock solid and super accurate, made with high quality parts like linear guide rails, ball screws, and closed loop servos that you don't see on a lot of cheaper CNC mills. Another plus, it's quiet. So with the lid closed, it's honestly no louder than a 3D printer.
I'd be pretty comfortable running this in an apartment. It handles wood, plastic, carbon fiber, circuit boards, even aluminum as you saw, as long as you're patient. It won't hog out material like a giant industrial mill, but it definitely gets the job done. You can also make two layer circuit boards complete with solder mask, silk screen, and vias all using just the machine. I've made decent PCBs in like 30 to 60 minutes.
Currently the Carvera is on sale for $5,199, but if that's too steep, Makera has the new Carvera Air on presale for $2099. The Carvera Air is the same precise, easy-to-use machine, minus a few bells and whistles. So the automatic tool changer is replaced with an easy to use lever system for manually changing tools. And the Z height probe is wired, it's over here instead of being wireless. And the laser module is optional.
You can also plug in your own vacuum for dust collection instead of it being integrated. Lastly, I just really like this company. I've gotten to know Josh, the CEO, pretty well.
He flew us out to his factory to see how the carvera is made. I'll link to that video down below. He's a maker himself, starting Makera after struggling with a cheap CNC kit while trying to make drones as a hobby. Their customer support is fantastic, often from Josh himself, despite the company having over 50 employees when I visited over a year and a half ago.
And it's not just my experience. I see customers on the Makera Discord regularly getting amazing support. So if you wanted to get into CNC machining, I can't recommend the Carvera and the Carvera Air highly enough. They're super user friendly, accessible to beginners, yet they produce professional quality results.
When I reached out to Josh about the sponsorship, I also asked for a little extra discount for Strange Parts fans. So if you buy a Carvera or a Carvera Air in the next 30 days by going to strangeparts.com/carvera and using the coupon code strangeparts, you'll get an additional $50 off on top of their existing holiday specials. So whether you're treating yourself or buying a gift for that special maker in your life, one of these would make an amazing holiday present.
And if you need any more convincing, I'll link to that factory tour and the Carvera unboxing video I made down below. And in a week or two, I'll be releasing my full review of the Carvera Air. If you're ready to jump in and try milling your own iPhone, I have beta versions of all the designs and all the other information you'll need available on my Patreon at patreon.com/strangeparts. You'll also get behind the scenes access to upcoming projects and a Strange Parts hoodie or T-shirt as well. This was a super time consuming and expensive project, nearly a year of intense work and tens of thousands of dollars.
To give you some sense of scale, I think these are all of the fixtures that I built, all or most of the different prototypes I made. And I know these are only some of the bits that I broke. (bits clacking) That's a lot of money right there. I can only afford to do ambitious projects like this with your support. Whether you decide to join Patreon or if you purchase a Carvera, it all helps. And I can't wait to dive into all of the upcoming projects I have planned.
I have a bunch more materials I wanna make iPhones out of. I wanna make designs of all of the available iPhone models. I have a sample of iPhone housings going all the way back to the iPhone 7, and maybe even Android as well. Because tons of people have old phones sitting in drawers, and I think they should get to do this with whatever model they have. And I wanna make a new version of the iPhone 12 design that has the proper antenna lines and a glass back and all of the other small details I left out of this first version.
I can't wait to get my new shop set up and dive into all of these new projects. And lastly, if you wanna talk about any of this in more depth, join our Discord community at discord.gg/strangeparts. I'll see you again soon.
2024-12-13 23:54
