3D printed multi-functional tripod (well actually quadpod)
The power of technology is something that keeps amazing me every day. The number of things you can do with some small electronic components and a bit of programming is overwhelming. But 3D printing is really on top of my “WOW AMAZING” list. As I work in a company building fully 3D-printed robots (EEVE), I felt I had to investigate some budget and time into this whole new world.
And that’s how my little home-lab got extended with an Original Prusa i3 MK3S+! This is the ideal getting-started printer, according to my colleagues. And indeed, after some minimal struggle and support — again — of my colleagues, I managed to get some first successful prints.
I will share some of my first experiments here in separate blogs.
First project: a multi-functional tripod
In an earlier post, you can find how the Raspberry Pi can be used as an HDMI camera, which I use to record my coding and electronics experiments. To make this process easier, I ordered some inexpensive clamps, but needed a solution to mount them easily in different directions.
This tripod is a first attempt to fix the issue of the limited height of a 3D-printer by combining a base, with extension tubes and simple connectors.
Designing the elements
On the SD card of the Prusa there are some example print files. But of course, I quickly wanted to create my own projects. As the whole process of creating 3D models is really new to me, I’m taking the simplest approach with Tinkercad, an easy-to-use 3D modeling program, free and online.
The slicing to gcode-files for the printer, is done with the also free PrusaSlicer software.
The different design and print files are shared on the Prusa Printers website where you can find a very long list of projects shared by the community.
Printed parts
These are some pictures of the different pieces on the printer.
Usage examples
By combining the different pieces and a clamp, it becomes very easy to point the camera in different directions on the height matching the use-case.
Conclusion
The stability is not really great when using too many extension tubes, so the next version should have a bigger base. But as a first test, this tripod does actually what is required!
Originally published at https://webtechie.be.
