Can you make yourself a 11x14 view camera bellow?

[diversey]

Below is a 11x14 bellow I made yesterday.

[Henry Suryo]

That looks good from here, David. Does it fold and fit ok? What thickness card and material did you use?

[diversey]

Hi, Henry: I used regular poster from Walmart and cut them following your drawing (thanks again!). Actually the bellows folds very well, better than I thought. I will try to put the bellows on my 11x14 camera this weekend. David

Poster cardboard and craft bond glue


Pleat layout

[Henry Suryo]

Yeah, after pressed for some time, the bellows will take its shape. But I think the corner folding in the algorithm could be improved. I'll have to revisit this some time. Hope your camera will be usable again, but I suspect you'd prefer to take the V11 instead. Enjoy!.

[Lee Hamiel]

I wrote a parametric unfolding program that generates a lasercut template for chamfered bellows. The input parameters are front and back X and Y dimensions, maximum extension, corner chamfer dimension, number of pleats (important for the minimum thickness based on the material used). The blue lines are score lines if you don't leave a gap for the fold, but it's better to leave a gap for the thickness of material (red offset cut lines). I have access to a large format lasercut machine at work so this saved a LOT of time. My first bellows didn't turn out too successful though, the card stock and bellows material were to thick to fold and didn't quite fit into the space of the folded camera.. I can help you with the 1:1 PDF template file which you can print on a big plotter or in pieces, the making part is a little tedious and for 11x14 size you will need a fairly large working area.

At a glance it appears that your seam-line is longitudinally disposed from front to back down the center axis - many larger bellow's seams have a diagonal bias along the bottom in order to allow for better compression in a closed state - think stacks of paperwork all stapled at the top left resulting in a huge disparity of thickness (at the top left)

Other aspects for all to consider is to always keep the old bellows for reference if available and size the pleats accordingly & do a "test strip" of materials combined (inner layer/stiffener/outer layer along with adhesives) for a sampling of 2 or 3 pleats - measure folded/closed with a micrometer & do the math & see if you are over the threshold of your collapsed camera's state

I will post a new thread soon regarding other old school methods for bellows making along with pics of a set of bellows I made for a Szabad 9x12/4x5 with information I received from the maker's son

Any bellows that work are great so long as they keep the light out & allow for easy movements

Regards

[Henry Suryo]

I think I know what you're saying. The corner triangular bits are skewed, the diagonals (hypotenuse) should be equal in length which make the unfolded pleats different depths. This was workable on my first bellows because it has similar front and back frame dimensions, but for something like the banquet formats the triangles become too distorted and probably won't fold well. I've seen templates where these triangular bits are omitted, but they help to give rigidity to the corners. Anyway need to fix this.

[diversey]

The bellow is not perfect, but it is workable.

Yeah, after pressed for some time, the bellows will take its shape. But I think the corner folding in the algorithm could be improved. I'll have to revisit this some time. Hope your camera will be usable again, but I suspect you'd prefer to take the V11 instead. Enjoy!.

[diversey]

The DIY bellows is installed on 11x14 Improved Seneca View Camera.

[Tin Can]

Very well done David!

[diversey]

Randy, thanks!

Very well done David!