Fix of a Fix

The tripod I use broke a couple of years after I bought it. I think i dropped the tripod, or it fell over, I can't remember. I didn't want to throw it away and I must have just built my first 3D printer, so I modelled and printed a new part for it. A while later another clamp on the tripod failed, so I modelled that (it was a different size) and fixed that problem.

Recently I had started to notice that one replaced clamp was a bit loose. Of course, I carried on using the tripod until the part failed, which is did a few days ago.

The broken part is here:

I think this was printed on my Mendel, but however I did it it looks like I was using very little infill at the time. You can see here

that there's none, really.


I printed the new part at a higher infill figure (50%) and also at a layer height of 0.1mm rather than 0.2mm. This leads to a denser part that hopefully will last a bit longer than the original.

Tripod Fix Adjustment

I fixed my tripod a while back:

https://trochilidae.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tripod-fixed-ive-printed-two-new-clamps.html

The clamp works by pressing onto a small rectangular block which stops the leg from collapsing. The 3D printed clamp wasn't quite the same size as the original on one of the clamps, so it didn't push very hard on the block. this meant the leg wasn't very firmly held when extended. Eventually the clamp slipped over the block and I lost it.

So I machined a new larger block out of nylon. This has fixed the problem and the clamp is now very firm when latching the leg.

Tripod Fixed

I've printed two new clamps for the broken tripod, and after a couple of iterations of both, I have a working tripod again:

I've used bolts and nyloc nuts to hold the clamp lever on to the part, so I don't have to hammer the brass rod into the part, as I broke a lot of the printed parts that way. It still works, it's a bit larger than the original, but it is now able to be dismantled.

Tripod Fixing

I bought a Manfrotto tripod ages ago and used it now and then. It's quite a nice smaller one that isn't too much of a pain to carry about. Unfortunately it fell over somewhere ( I forget where) and it broke. At the time I didn't have a 3D printer so fixing the plastic part that had broken wasn't really an option. Last weekend we went to the London Lumiere displays and I thought of using a tripod again as all the displays were turned on after dark. In the end I didn't use one, and got some interesting photos anyway.

I decided to have a go at fixing the tripod as it was useful now and again and would be a shame to throw away. So, after some OpenSCAD and printing I have this:

This is the clamp that broke attached to the tripod leg. I've got a drill bit temporarily holding it all together as the original fixing of the handle was done by hammering the brass rod into the handle. This is a pain and I've broken a couple of plastic fitting this way. If the only broken poart was this one then I'd be done at this point, but when I was trying to dismantle the leg I needed to take another part off, and hammering the brass rod out resulted in the plastic part cracking. So now I have to fix another part (slightly larger so I can't use the first design).

Anyway, the clamp seems to work OK, so the fix looks like it may work...