Hey, first time posting here hope someone can offer some advice on a project i'm working on. I'm building a rail system for high speed cameras and am attempting to mount a camera on a 7 foot rail horizontally, which will then be mounted on a vertical 7 foot rail– theoretically giving the camera a 7 foot by 7 foot range to shoot, by sliding it and it's rail along both the x and y axis. Does this sound structurally possible?
I've tried to bridge rails together for camera use before and unless you have a way of perfectly mating the ends- milled, ground, maybe even lapped, you're gonna get a jerk where the rails meet. Could you do a rail-on-rail telescopic extension arm somehow instead?
Hey Rob, thanks for the suggestions. To make my idea a little clearer, here is a preliminary rendering of what I'm thinking about doing. The camera would be mounted on the horizontal rail, which in turn is mounted to the vertical rail.
I understood the concept perfectly, but the rails only come in 6ft lengths? Disregarding the length and answering the larger question, no, I definitely wouldn’t mount any camera I owned to that! Far too much cantilevering and leverages at play, especially for high-speed work. It needs to be mounted on a larger chassis.
I get what you're trying to do, but the weight of a camera 7' out will probably not be supportable with a single plate and a few wheels. You'd be better off with 2 vertical rails and one continuous 7' rail between them. Like a big H where the cross piece moves up and down. Edit: ninja'd by Rob.
This H system seems perfect! My next question is as far as moving along the vertical axis on two rails, is one motor sufficient?
Just one motor on one of the uprights would simply jam the crossbar as it got out of horizontal. A motor on each vertical is no real problem, and would be easy to keep in sync. I think your H format is going to need additional structural support as well.
