I was working on a shoot last week and accidentally knocked over one my DSLR rigs.  Thankfully the Cube Cage completely protected the camera, but the frame of the rig hit just right and busted off a small chunk from one of the handle mounts. I was thinking about ordering another one from CPM, or picking up one of the $50 aluminum A frame handles on ebay. Although after looking at it, I thought it might be an interesting test to see if I could print a replacement handle with the Makergear Prusa 3d printer I just finished building.

My first attempt was to reuse most of the hardware included with the CPM A frame handle. This worked out better then I expected and was just small enough to print on the Makerbot Thing-o-Matic, the downside is that it took almost 4 hours to print and I felt like the design could be improved. You can download the files and design here.

Version 2 was printed on the Makergear Prusa in 2 hours and 10 minutes and is a little bit to big for the Makerbot. This design still uses the same hardware but adds thicker walls and a little bit more plastic. It’s amazing to me that I can print more then twice as fast on the Prusa as I can the Makerbot. You can also find the design files for V2 here.

The final version uses a barbell configuration which saves on hardware and ends up making a much more compact design and sturdy feel. Total print time was 1 hours 51 minutes and I think this design is the winner. Each of these handles uses quit a bit of plastic, so they probably wont be showing up in the Noob store anytime soon, but it’s very interesting to see that something like this can be designed, printed, and used in the same day. It might also be interesting to try and adapt this design to work with a cheap easy to find handle like this one, but for now this will keep my rig together.


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