My Replacement Ash Tray

[Steve108]

Since I don't smoke and putting coins in the ash tray jams it, I decided to make one that was more useful to me.

I also have an aftermarket head unit that has a few USB ports and I wanted a way to organize them more neatly.

Here is what I came up with:





The large slot on the left is a wireless charging area for a cell phone. The two USB ports are on the right. There are small holes under the USB ports to allow light from the ash tray light to show through the face and help with locating them in the dark. I think it might be useful to add some light pipes in these holes.



The small U shaped clips hold the USB port in to the ash tray face.



The wireless charging pad is powered by the old lighter socket wiring. A tray holds the phone in the right position for the charger to work.

Everything except the "Cayenne" inlay is 3D printed with PETG. The inlay is 3D printed in PLA. I smoothed the inlay with acetone and glued it in to to face. Once it was glued in, I wetsanded the face with 100, 220, and 400 grit sandpaper so everything was flush. Finally, I heated the sanded face gently with a heat gun to make it a bit darker in color (after sanding it was more of a gray color). I think there is room for improvement in the finishing process. One thought would be to increase the infill percent near the face to 100% so you have more material to work with. You can see where mine is a little thin on the right side.

This is the prototype model and it's not perfect but it does work. I would use black adhesive if I were to make another one. The ash tray and face fit the car really, really well. It stays closed by friction alone, but you do have to hold it closed when removing a USB device. I'm sure there are a lot of ways to address this. The fitment of the phone tray and charging pad could use a little massaging but they are usable as printed. You'd probably want to adjust to fit your own phone, usb ports, and charging pad anyway... It matches my 13 year old interior well enough that I'm just going to enjoy this one for now.





The STLs and original Inventor files are uploaded here in case you want to try making your own:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16v0JCLPlRQocHntpRFrGPf3TfzLcbWyk/view?usp=sharing

Free to use/ modify/ distribute. Only thing I ask is please don't claim my work as your own.

[Steve108]

One more note - there are two versions of the logo. The "tab" version has a little tab on it to make it easier to handle when smoothing with the acetone. Just trim that off and sand smooth when you are done.

Car is a 2008.

[honerboys]

very nice job - looks great - unfortunately for me mine is a later car where they moved the ash tray to just forward of the shifter - it's so small it can't accommodate a phone - honestly i'm not even sure it makes a good ash tray - sort of like the ones in the rear doors

[Steve108]

Thanks!

[RNajarian]

Thanks pal! I’ve been looking for something like this for my 996

[Steve108]

Had a little problem with my wireless charging pad. The one I bought was rated for 10.5 to 14 volts which usually means it will work fine in a car.

Apparently that range is a hard number on mine, and the 14.15 volts the Cayenne charges at was too much for it, so my charger would shut down whenever the engine was running.

For a quick fix I made this little inline voltage dropper:



The two large diodes are NTE5812's and the the smaller one is a P6KE18 TVS. The NTE5812's each add a voltage drop of around 1 volt and are rated for 6 amps, which is much more than the charger will use. I selected these because I have a lot of them. Any normal silicon diode rated for a couple amps should work fine here.

The TVS will clamp larger voltage spikes and is optional, I just have a bunch on hand so I figured it wouldn't hurt. If you don't have any that's OK, the larger diodes are the ones actually fixing the problem. I wrapped the whole thing in heat shrink after testing it.