Horseman 8x10 Homemade Tripod Block

[HT Finley]

It's been about 6 weeks when I did a little research and got an Ender 3, the plain basic one, open-box for about $150 maybe. Had never seen a 3D printer before. So I got busy studying Freecad. I don't know whether all those years as a printer doing Adobe helped or not. Anyway, today I finished up this project for my big 8x10 Horseman. What a beast of a camera. Hard to imagine at one time I was putting that ship's anchor on top of my Tiltall. It worked, as long as you waited for the whole shebang to stop wobbling before you push the cable release plunger. Like a train locomotive balanced on a toothpick. Now THIS is sturdy enough for an earthquake. I might mention (unendorsed) that the fine folks at Hayes Instrument Co in Shelbyville Tenn were very helpful. I got this nice 70 inch fiberglass contractor's tripod for $106 + 18.84 shipping to Charlotte NC. A great deal. It's a Sitepro Salamander. Dadgum thing practically glows in the dark. Kind of a comfort I won't get my backside run over while my head is under the cloth. Looky at my tripod adapter plate I made. Works great. Looks downright professional, doesn't it? Of course it's just PLA plastic, so I would't want to sling the tripod and camera over my shoulder and traipse around hunting photos. Might snap off. But for general use I'm sure it will be fine. What would it have cost me to have a machinist make up one out of aluminum? The last photo is just a memorial of the big L-arm that is no longer part of the camera. That dadgum L-arm weighs 40-leven pounds and makes the camera completely lopsided with weight. Good riddance. I like this surveyor's tripod. I might take my Horseman design and adapt it for my Super Graphic and give the Tiltall an well-deserved 46 year service retirement. It sure was a fine servant.

[HT Finley]

This project turned out exceptionally well. I'm convinced it is sturdy and operative. In retrospect there is one thing I would have done differently. The question being, can this brittle plastic adapter take the stress of picking up the tripod with camera attached, folding the legs together, and walk around with it over my shoulder like a 50 caliber machine gun? Or will it snap off? If I had it to do over I would design threaded holes to drive long #4 or #6 screws in at questionable points to act as rebar in concrete. That way, if it starts to fracture up it would likely not be so instantly catastrophic as to have the camera snap off in one fell swoop. It's only plastic. 1 inch of it can't compare to the strength of 1/16 inch of steel. Any fracture would likely give fair warning of impending total failure, if it had "rebar" embedded in it. One thing that amazed me about this Ender 3 after several projects under my belt. Screw threads turn out excesptionally well, with Cura slicer in the standard setting. Getting a screw started without a cross-thread is very easy. By the time you get the screw straightened out you've only damaged 1 or 2 threads. The rest of the way is like machined threads in aluminum. the screw go right down like a dream. I'm not going to re-do the project because I have 2/3 of a roll of PLA and 35 hours print time in it. One thing is for sure. A contractor's tripod is the way to go. Next project is to design an adapter that can go from the 5/8 screw of the tripod to a smaller one to take a tripod head. I don't plan on using a head on this 8x10. A camera like that will almostly exclusively be used by leveling up the camera and using its movements to frame. Changing leg length will do that with a minimum of trouble. No tripod head needed.