Camera Mount Design
 

What do you guys think of this design? It's a work in progress...but thought I'd start a thread so people can give me some ideas as for improvement...I'm thinking of adding a swivel/height adjustment to it.


http://www.the370z.com/members/scruf...t-assembly.jpg

Looks great! Would look nice in black Delrin :tup:

that would be a hot seller right there, great idea!

Black Delrin would be easy to machine so it'll probably be cheap in cost. However, the down side to Delrin is you can stick anything to it. Which in this case shouldn't be a problem. Thanks for the suggestion

Cool idea, thats the first thing I thought when I saw the bar behind the seats too. IMO the bar sits kind of low, so you'd have to have a longer neck or maybe even a telescoping bar that comes up from the mount?

($0.02)

Add an adjustment pivot in the cylinder so you can adjust the camera up and down and you'll have a winner.

Very easy to machine but not super cheap. Very tough, durable, wear resistant plus no additional anodizing required (could be a negative if someone wants color?)

Buying online ~$64 for a 4"x4"x8" block. Another site showed ~$440 for a 4"x12"x12".

I machined/prototyped some underwater equipment (years ago) using Delrin…….love the stuff.

yea, they're definitely very easy to machine and thanks for letting me know they're not that cheap because I only use it for work and whenever i send out prototypes I hardly pay any attention to cost since most of the things i make the final product is a combination of metal brackets inside an injection molded part. Anyhow, I am not here to try to start a business to make any money. I just want to design stuff for 370z members (mainly myself) and hopefully I could get it out there cheap enough so others will also buy it. Right now I'm struggling between the swivel idea because I want it really robust and I think having it on a rotating ball just seems like it provides too much of a degree of freedom for something that's only going to be adjusted one time unlike a typical camera mount where you adjust it constantly at different locations. I don't want someone giving it a minor bump to move the camera angle.

I am trying to come up with either slide rails type of adjustment for height instead - that way it'd be more steady. Plus, I want something that looks good as well while keeping functionality and cost in mind.

Very simplistic approach for height adjustment.

I have no design software on my IMAC so please don't make fun of my hacking in PowerPoint (for Mac) of all things…….

HAHA, that's exactly what I had in mind too! But I was just trying to stay away the push in ball probe approach or a hood pin design because it'll stick out and would look ugly...I'm thinking of a knob right now that compresses a block to the shaft....what do you guys think? I'll try to change the design a little.

yea, i'm thinking the same thing...i'll try to have it reach out a litter further too.

going by that picture, it looks the same size as my tripods i taped to the bar with my camera to record my video.

YouTube - 370z drag race

So that would be a perfect height, i would defently buy one.

that sounds good! I'm glad there are actually people interested. I'll try to design this in a reasonable price for everybody....so I'll most likely ditch the "Z" logo because it'll add the cost of machining big time. I will look for metal material probably because you can anodize it to whatever color, plus it may be cheaper than Delrin?!? I'll change the design a little bit and maybe have it extends a little forward (closer to the windshield) so the camera doesn't sit too far back.

Very cool looking design. Two questions:
1. What prevents this thing from sliding left or right? (probably just clamped down pretty tight?)
2. And will it scratch the strut bar at all?

It will come with some kind of rubbery padding inserts which will prevent scratch and from sliding it from left to right. Thanks for pointing that out. The clamp will have recess surface for the rubbery pads.

By the way, does anyone know of a good offset in height for the camera in respect to the strut tower bar? I'm thinking at least 50 mm. 100mm? 200mm?