FuriLabs Convergance Hub
Feb 5, 2026
FuriLabs makes a really cool Linux-based smartphone! And cooler yet, they are releasing a convergence hub so that you can use your Linux smartphone as a Linux PC as well. There was not a finished convergence hub ready for their booth at FOSDEM 2026, so I helped them 3D print one.
The 3D model provided was a graphical mockup of the final assembly (i.e. not designed to be 3D printed), so I had to do some modifications to make it printable. Harder yet (for me), I was stuck doing this in Blender instead of my usual CAD tool. This meant deleting a bunch of parts like the motherboard and IO ports, and joining together various surfaces to make solid shapes. The 3D Print Toolbox has a make manifold cleanup utility that is very helpful for this work.
When I loaded the initial model in my slicer software, the units were incompatible (off by a factor of 1000). The dimensions in blender matched reality, I'm still not sure why the dimension mismatch was happening, but setting the unit scale to 1000 in the scene properties dialog fixed it.
We had to fit a prototype circuit in this print, so I created a friction-fit enclosure using a boolean difference modifier. I also created a mockup of the dimensions of the prototype (conveniently a cuboid) that also allowed me to print out a precision cuboid for test-fitting the design.
The first iteration was very flimsy in some places - the junction between the phone holder (circled in red) snapped almost immediately. The arm assembly and phone holder were also quite thin and did not inspire confidence. This thing would have to stand up to thousands of conference attendees handling it, so flimsy wasn't acceptable.
I fixed the snapping phone holder connection by smushing the phone holder sub assembly "into" the hinge for a wider cross-section at their connection. I also made things less flimsy by adding some thicker supports to the back of the phone holder, and thickening the arm members. Printing the model at 100% infill also helped make things more rigid.
Finally, getting the actual circuit prototype to fit in the friction-fit cavity took a few iterations. The first two models needed some manual shaving with a box knife to get the device to fit correctly - which seemed weird, because I gave the design about .3mm of tolerance and should have fit nicely. I think the orientation that I printed the device in was not conducive to maintain this specific tolerance - this was a dimensions being developed along the Z axis. The final print was run at 50% speed and this maintained the tolerance well enough to not require any further adjustments.
