Hi, I am looking for some help. I am looking to recreate something like this and I would be interested in any similar builds that people have made and any tips. I work in a university lab using a high speed camera, the camera is big (20cm by 20cm by 30cm) and weighs 7kg so the system needs to be very strong and stable. The idea is that the camera would be mounted on the horizontal platform. Ideally I would like to add another axis to have XYZ control. My current idea is based on using the open builds C-Beam rail with lead screws and Nema 23 Any thoughts would be most appreciated. Matheu
Can you supply a rudimentary drawing of what you have in mind, or pictures of the camera in question, as I'm having a hard time trying to picture your idea? How large/ are the items you photograph? Gray
Matheu, The img file you have included in your post is behind a firewall and doesn't show up. Please save it to your system and then drag and drop it into the post.
Hi, Sorry about the issues with the photos. Hopefully this should work better. And some further information on what I do and how this would work. 1) Example of the camera that we use. This camera is 20cm by 20cm by 30cm and weighs 7kg without added lenses. We use it to study water droplets as they impact surfaces at high speed so we tend to have very high magnification. High magnification gives us a small working distance (distance over which the camera is in focus). Moving the camera along the x axis (horizontal to the table) allows us to focus the camera, currently done by hand but would be much better if this motion is fine controlled by a stepper rail. We often have to change the setup depending on the different things we are studying and this means taking apart and reassembling. We wouldn't need to do this if we could also control the Z axis, height of the camera above the surface of the table. 2) This is an example of what I am looking to make although the quote for this without electronics was $8500 hence building it myself would be better. The X axis horizontal motion would need a range of 500mm and the Z axis vertical motion would need 500mm. All of it needs to be strongly joined with 90 degree brackets. With a build plate that would allow for the mounting of the camera. A possible upgrade would be to add an extra y axis on the base. This would allow for us to move the camera between different experiments however this is not a priory at the moment. I am worried about stability of this type of setup as the camera moves its centre of gravity over to one edge. Thank you for your time and help Matheu
Here is a suggestion from a previous post. It's a little bigger than what you seek but could easily be scaled down, especially the long axis which could be converted from a belt drive to a screw drive which would be more fitting to your needs. Overall you should easily be able to accomplish what you seek for under $1500.
