My father has been building cameras for a long time. His cameras a great and they have changed and evolved over the years. I worked for him for a while as well building a lot of the cameras that are out there in the world. The cameras have come in two forms: traditional wood and metal or all metal.
Times are changing. Due to the world market, cost of materials, and the simple fact that my father is getting older, he is slowing ending production of the cameras he has built for years.
I asked my dad the other day if I could have one of the “.stl” files of a camera part from the DLC series of cameras. I wanted to see what would happen if I tried printing it on a good quality (not crazy good, but very good) 3D printer. He said sure, and he sent me the file for the bed of the DLC camera.
I have access to a range of 3D printers teaching at BSU that I a use for free (within a reasonable amount of material), and I took the “.stl” file down. One of the people who works there helped me get setup, and I set the thing up print on a reasonable quality level. I didn’t want to go overboard on this trial run so I didn’t do anything crazy on the infill or the wall size or the outer texture.
I was able to get it started between my 2 classes, and before I had to get to my class this is what I saw:
After my second class I went back to the maker space and it wasn’t ready. Someone loaded a second filament into the printer, but forgot to hit “go” and so it wasn’t ready. I hit go, and then I had to leave and I had to wait a week until I was back on campus to pick it up, but when I did get there this is what was waiting for me:
Yes it is 3 different colors. I told them I was fine with that before I left it to run. They said that the first spool would run out and I said they could use up anything they wanted to use up on this test trial.
So, what do I think?
This was made out of PLA and not a better material like PET-CF or PETG.
What is the end goal? I don’t know. I think if I go forward on this concept of printing all the parts I will use a different material. I will have to supply that material, but I think it may help. If it works I was thinking about the idea of seeing what it would cost and the time involved to print an entire camera. Will it be as good as an all metal DLC? Absolutely not. But if I can build it for a low enough cost and still keep the quality up to a certain point then maybe this is an option for camera building in the future. I am not sure about this. It will take time, energy, and money to figure out if it makes sense or not, but I think I am going to try.
After talking to my dad about the part he made some suggestions about possible changes to make if I do decide to take this farther. He suggested using inserts for the threaded holes. That was a good idea so no one could strip out the plastic threads if I were to try simply tapping the holes. It was good talking to him about it. He is going to get me more part files and I am going to see what I can do. (I may have to learn some 3D cad programing)
And as a bonus, if it is good enough then I will buy a 3D printer and be able to print other cool things as well.
Looks cool!