Lubricant for tripod heads

[Manne Granberg]

Hello!

I bought a Sinar pan/tilt head and before doing something that could induce having to redo it, I thought I'd ask to see if anybody with more experience would recommend some specific lubricant?

[Leigh]

What are you planning to lubricate?

Tripod heads rely on friction to keep the camera in position.

- Leigh

[Manne Granberg]

The moving parts that don't produce any friction, at least not any functionally required friction. I'll start with the tilt screw as that seems to produce most of the squeaking.

[philipmorg]

If you're going to lubricate something like your Sinar Pan-Tilt head, clean the area with spray electronics cleaner or acetone and use the smallest possible amount of molybdenum disulfide grease. This is the lubricant I use and recommend for servicing Sinar Normas and other metal monorail cameras, and I believe it would work well in this application.

Which axis are you lubricating? If it's the pan axis, then go ahead. If it's the tilt axis, I believe you may want to check the condition of the plastic disks that are used along the tilt axis. I believe these are not lubricated at all. Last I heard, replacements for these disks can be purchased from here: http://www.bronimaging.com/customerservice.php

--Philip.

[Struan Gray]

I disassembled my squeaky Norma head completely, cleaned everything with a good degreaser (petrol bath, followed by IPA/methanol) and then used a bare minimum of lubricant on the main screw thread. Everything else I left clean and dry. The head works like a charm.

Sinar used to include a pot of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) grease with the Norma cameras. I used a tiny smear of a MoS2 grease which is normally used on the threads of vacuum systems (stainless steel bolts which are repeatedly baked at 200 °C or more). It's what I had lying about at the lab. Not ideal as ingesting MoS2 isn't a good idea, which includes licking your fingers or touching your face after handling it the bolts. Bike shops have cleaner, non toxic graphite-based greases and dust-on powders which would be better.