Fixing a Panasonic H-FS014042 Lens

I use Panasonic GF1 and GF3 cameras for stills and video. I use the 20mm lens that came with a GF1 and also a selection of Pentax lenses and micro four thirds adapters. The 20mm is an auto focus lens, but all of the others are manual focus. This is fine in the workshop when shooting video or taking macro shots of bits and pieces, but when out and about it's a lot more convenient using auto focus. I've been looking for a zoom lens for the cameras for weeks. they are quite expensive, probably because they can be used on a wide range of cameras. Not wanting to spend much money on the lens, I waited until a broken one came up for sale that I thought I had a chance of fixing.


The lens I bought had probably been dropped and the mounting flanges had broken off. I removed the part that was broken:

I tried the most sensible route to a fix: try to buy spare parts. As usual, they aren't available. I was told that my best course of action was to have the lens serviced at an authorised service centre. I suspect this would have cost more than I paid for all of the GF cameras and lenses put together.
So, instead of this I decided to have a go at making the part myself. I have a 3D printer and this is a plastic part...

Here's one of the prototypes I made along the way:

Did it work? Well, yes it did. In fact the first two photos in this blog entry were taken with the previously broken lens.

This photo wasn't, for obvious reasons:

I do get a few lens attachment errors ( I think the contacts need to be moved up a bit), and I lost a screw (not technically lost I suppose, I know where it is: somewhere in the workshop), I have only aligned two of the four mounting screws and I have to drill a few holes by hand, but it does work.

Auto focus and everything.

It works as it is, but I'll probably improve it to remove the annoying lens attachment warning. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean it won't do the job.