So, I finally got to do some playing with the 3D printer I bought last year. It’s a Monoprice Select Mini 3D – a printer with a reputation for being incredibly cheap. Which it was; which is why I have it.
Anyhow, I had a plan to make a replacement quick release plate for the tripod I bought from goodwill. It’s a cheap not-quite-fluid-but-mimics-fluid-motion tripod. Which is fine, I just needed something fairly solid to stick the camera on. However, it – like seemingly nearly all the tripods at our local goodwill – was missing its quick release head. So I thought I’d give a bit of design and print a go.
What I ended up with is this. Which was an interesting learning experience. I kept having the sloped section at the end printing separately, which is how it ended up with this version where it overlaps a bit. I’ve now got a bit better, I think, at making stuff join together, so I’d fix that if I ever reprint it. If I was to reprint it, I’d make it about 1mm wider too, and possibly reinstate the sloped section that I did have at the opposite end from the current slope (which I chopped off for simplicity, but which would improve fit a little). I’d also make the recess for the bolt that acts as a camera screw a bit deeper.
Anyhow. Having eventually achieved success (I both got it to print AND it actually fits!), I then stepped up my game to produce a doohick to hold my tablet underneath the camera so it can act as a teleprompter. Now really, if I end up doing more videos then I should probably step it up to a proper teleprompter. But, for the moment I have this:
Irritatingly, my local hardware shop doesn’t have any long enough screws in either metric or imperial; and for once my dad’s box of a billion screws failed me (although I think in the sub-box of a thousand screws which is somewhere in one of the many boxes around the place, there probably is the screw I’m after). There are several refinements I should make to this, too. But I’m not really likely to.
But it’s here:
It should work okay, so long as I’m some distance from the camera. That way you can’t so obviously see I’m looking just below it.
Anyhow. I’m very much enjoying the 3D printing. Although I am the least efficient designer in the history of time. It took 2 printed iterations of the tablet holder for me to realise that the design is lacking a few things. Really it would also benefit from a spring to pull the two clamps together. And the version of the design I first printed was over complicated and one-clamp based, for reasons that currently escape me. The new version just has two copies of the same clamp. Much easier. Thankfully the one-clamp bit will work with the two-clamp design. So I didn’t have to reprint it.
Funnily enough, after months of failure, it seems dumping the printer in the corner of the cupboard where I can’t tweak the adjustment easily has proven to be the key. It seems to happily print away (although adhesion remains a problem. Justin suggested a different hairspray-as-adhesive a while back, so I shall give that a go at some point).
Anyway, yay. Yay for making things. Sorta.
Now I just need to find the wood for my chair project.
