3D Printed Camera arm with arms made of carbon fibre. It uses 1/4 Inch threads so is compatible with tripods and other camera accessories. It is demo’ed here with a phone mount so that you can use it as a camera arm.
Demonstrating my improved tuning of the 3D printer allowing me to print threads on the adjustment knobs and tight tolerances and my improved use of the carbon fibre to make dimensionally accurate tubing.
How it was made
Steps to make:
- Download STL files
- Print STLS with recommended settings
- Take tubes and wrap in carbon fibre
- Saturate carbon fibre with epoxy
- Tightly wrap tubes in several layers of tape
- Remove tape once carbon has cured
- Heat treat joints with the oven at 100 degrees c
- Remove joints from the oven after 15 minutes
- Press fit carbon fibre rods into the joints
- Assemble parts into Arm
- Attach to tripod or other mount
Object In Use
Reflection
The combination of 3d printing and carbon fibre layup have great potential for homemade camera accessories. The fact that I can now print very accurate threads and parts to high tolerance means that I am able to make objects that assist with filming. For camera mounts and arms and things, it is crucial that the parts are very strong and usually that they are light enough so they don’t swing about too much when attached to a tripod or other fixing.
Carbon fibre is therefore the perfect material to do the job: it is widely used in the film and photo industry for just these reasons and the process that I have explored is just a way of making that accessible to people in their own homes. There is a massive cost to anything camera related so I think its pretty significant that it is possible to make a high performance camera mount at home using limited tools and this process.
Particularly this method that I have used to make carbon fibre tubes by using a cylindrical mould and tape to secure it is something that I think could be done very easily by most people and could be used to make all sorts of other things.