3D Printing film cameras and parts

Donald Qualls · Jun 7, 2021

4season said:
Or maybe 16mm film cassettes.

Minolta 16 cassette has a Thing on Thingiverse. You'll need to add felt to the film slots in the supply and takeup chambers, but I hear from the submini-L folks that they work. I'd recommend a tested opaque filament, though; most black PLA is still a bit translucent with the thin walls this will require. I've got a couple spools of Atomic Filament Deep Black PETG, which they claim is opaque; haven't had a chance to print an opacity test with it yet.

titrisol · Jun 7, 2021

The chips that are used to control the stepper motors generate a lot of heat, and those overheat faster than the power supply
The fan is supposed to suck-cold air to keep them cold; check is you have a cable "shadowing" the cold air stream to the stepper control chips and check if the heat sinks are well glued

Donald Qualls said:
Also a possibility, though I haven't notice heat coming out of the power supply. The mainboard cooling fan sucks in, rather than blowing out, however, so it's harder to tell if it's running hot.

Donald Qualls · Jun 7, 2021

Yep, power MOSFETs are prone to getting hot if they're working hard. Occurs to me that generally when I've seen this was when printing infill, which involves a lot of starting and stopping in X and Y as well as repeated retraction and recovery by the extruder motor, and when my office was on the warm side -- but infill, with lots of direction changes and faster X and Y speeds is also when the stepper pulse loop in the firmware is most likely to get saturated (this is an 8-bit mainboard), which will also cause a reboot.

Donald Qualls · Jun 8, 2021

grat said:
Hrm. I thought I posted this the other day. Maybe I'm lacking in sleep.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/tool/400ft-roll-film-bulk-loader

Okay, got a chance to download this (free file, it turns out). Won't fit on my build plate; the main body is 10 mm or so too big in both X and Y axes. Might just about fit cornerwise and standing on one end, but that's going to call for lots of supports -- and it'll be about a 2-day print, so I really want it to work well on the first try, hence I won't mess with it until I get my printer restarts straightened out.

EDIT: The body of that loader doesn't even fit cornerwise; it's protruding out of the build area by a couple millimeters no matter how I move it around. However: despite being labeled as as 400 foot loader, I"m pretty sure that loader is actually built to take a 1000 foot roll. A 400 foot roll on a 2 inch O.D. spool is no more than about 6 1/2 inches, 160 mm, in diameter, while this loader is sized to accept a roll at least nine, more like ten inches across (which is why it won't fit, even diagonally, in an approximately 8x8 inch -- officially 235x235 mm -- build area).

So now I'm back to either remixing one or the other of these designs (the 100 foot or the 1000 foot size), or starting from scratch to design my own Lloyd style loader to take 400 foot rolls.

Captain Mainwaring · Jun 17, 2021

This thread is so relevant I'm marrying it! I've been mulling over 3D-printed reduction masks for cameras as well as other things such as better scanning adapters for ages now. I've had some moderate success with black cardboard. Warming-yourself-up-sitting-close-to-a-lit-cigarette kind of moderate.

Donald Qualls · Jun 18, 2021

I've got an adapter I made from polystyrene sheet to hold 4 strips of 16 mm in a 4x5 film carrier, years ago when my first scanner (vintage ca. 1998) was the best I could do -- but I found I was better off putting the film in my enlarger and aiming compact digital camera up in to the lens. The scanner I have now (Epson V850) will get enough data from 16 mm to be worth using (~8.5 megapixels from 110 or newer Minolta/Kiev frame); the old one was barely above VGA, where I could get around 2.5 megapixels with the little Gateway camera and enlarger setup (though it was a major PITA to use).

The advantage of a 3D printed adapter is ease of construction and accuracy -- if my printer is set up and adjusted properly, I get straight edges and accurate dimensions, vs. hand held (even if ruler guided) cuts with a utility knife. Safer, too. And someone else has done the design work already; I can download a file to print an adapter that carries 16mm in a 120 window.

grahamp · Jul 8, 2021

I'm starting to work with PETG for the first time, as I need to make a replacement Jobo measuring cylinder which will be sat in a water bath for many hours. I don't think PLA will be up to it, and nylon (while possible) seems a step too far... With 10 degrees C below the recommended extruder temperature and a lot or retraction, and the stringing is starting to come under control! Still, it will be nice to replace the dying cylinders with some a little larger. I have had the design sitting on the back burner for the last year with just a PLA test.

On a different topic of sorts, this looks like an ambitious but interesting project, a scalable 4x5/5x7/8x10 camera. Up to 5x7 so far. https://github.com/edgarkech/scalable_field_camera

I do not need another view camera. Really. No.

Donald Qualls · Jul 9, 2021

If I had a bigger printer, printing my own might look like the only affordable path to 8x10 film. I've collected a design for an 8x10 film holder (it's single sided, but using it for a pattern, it shouldn't be terrible to redraw a double sided one), and a printed field camera ought to be really lightweight. Lens and bellows (and film, of course) would be the major expenses, instead of starting with a thousand bucks or so for a basic camera. And it's possible to make your own bellows, though I don't really have a big enough workspace.

Luckless · Jul 9, 2021

I still need to get a cabinet built to house my printer. It is 'just a little too loud' to run while my girlfriend is sleeping, and a tad distracting when watching TV. So far I've made a few parts with mine, such as lens boards for my Busch Pressman camera, and am looking forward to learning my way around fusion 360 more to build more things.

One of my goals for the summer is to possibly design a 3D printable film back for my RB67. I'm not super keen on standard backs, and kind of want something that securely captures its own darkslide when not in use. Plus if I have a design that works then I don't have to hunt down working original backs that may or may not be wearing out by this point.

Donald Qualls · Jul 9, 2021

I haven't tried Fusion 360 yet -- I started on FreeCAD before I had a printer, and haven't felt the need for anything else, other than that it doesn't seem to have a good way to modify an existing .stl file (so it's hard to "remix" downloaded designs).

What brand/model printer do you have? My Ender 3 is barely audible over the fans in my desktop computer. Mine is new enough to have the 32-bit mainboard, which includes "silent" stepper drivers. If you have an older Ender 3, you can upgrade the mainboard for about $40 (may be higher in Canada). "Silent" is an option for some of the other basic FDM printers as well, and most of the ones in the next price tier.

grahamp · Jul 9, 2021

Be careful that enclosing the printer does not heat up the logic unit too much. My QIDI X-Plus is enclosed, but the motors still 'sing', particularly doing curves. Fortunately it is not in the living room, and is not loud enough to be a distraction. It looks nice enough that my wife considers it a feature Plus she has projects for it herself!

grahamp · Jul 9, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
If I had a bigger printer, printing my own might look like the only affordable path to 8x10 film. I've collected a design for an 8x10 film holder (it's single sided, but using it for a pattern, it shouldn't be terrible to redraw a double sided one), and a printed field camera ought to be really lightweight. Lens and bellows (and film, of course) would be the major expenses, instead of starting with a thousand bucks or so for a basic camera. And it's possible to make your own bellows, though I don't really have a big enough workspace.

I keep looking at doing an 8x10 holder. It would have to cost less than $50 for materials each to be viable, I think. Black anodized aluminium for the centre septum, and black Delrin for the dark slides. What I'm really stumped about is the light trap. This is usually a finger spring strip, possibly backed by felt. A pure felt trap might be enough, but I have no idea how much use it would take. The darlslide is fully removed and inserted, which adds to potential wear. I suppose it might be possible to design a holder with a top section that could be disassembled, but I doubt there is enough clearance for bolts. The Fidelity units are made in two pieces and bonded

I have just enough bed space to do the parts separately on the diagonal. Seven pieces for the holder body, and maybe four for the dark slide grips. I have the ANSI measurements and an exemplar.

Donald Qualls · Jul 9, 2021

@grahamp Pretty sure you could print the septum (and either PLA or PETG is only 2-3 cents a gram), and I'd be about as likely to use aluminum or steel sheet for the dark slide as acetal (cheaper and guaranteed opaque to IR as well as visible). Finger spring can be had in strips from industrial suppliers like Grainger or MSC, or you could use a piece of Bowden tube under the felt. PLA takes super glue very well, and epoxy works too if you prefer it (you can mix black pigment like lamp black into it if you like, with almost no loss of bond strength).

I think materials could cost as little as $15-20 if you buy more than one holder worth. I'd bet the places that sell trophy plates to collodion users could cut that to dark slide dimension for a few bucks a slide, but it'd be cheaper to buy steel sheet from Metal Shorts or similar and cut it yourself or get them to cut it oversize enough to grind to exact (their tolerances aren't good enough for our needs).

grahamp · Jul 9, 2021

The septum is beyond my printer capacity as a single job, unfortunately. It is a bit thin for a two-part item with an overlap joint, but at 1mm overall it might work as two pieces 270 x 125mm.

The Bowden tube is an interesting idea - setting up finger springs in the space might be beyond me (I'm a geologist/computer systems person by training, not an engineer/CAD expert).

The septum needs to be black, but the dark slides don't have to be, of course. Just opaque. Thin Al sheet (0.5mm or so) is prone to bend, though. I doubt I could cut steel sheet accurately enough with my facilities. If I can save weight on the septum I could go for heavier dark slides. I can think of a couple of cases where black dark slides would be useful, and that's as a lens shade and when making a half slide for 4x10.

Good ideas - thanks.

Luckless · Jul 9, 2021

I have an Ender 3 Pro with a 4.2.2 board, which I was getting conflicting reports as to what drivers were on that board and how much of a possible improvement the 4.2.7 board would be. A 4.2.7 has been sitting in the drawer beside me for months waiting for me to find the time and energy to deal with the mess left on the original board from whoever got their hands on a snot-gun during factory assembly... As 'mildly annoying' as the Ender 3 Pro was to put together, I honestly would have prefered having to sort those wires out myself than deal with trying to unplug these leads.

Was half tempted to take wire cutters to things and just make a new wiring harness, but I've gotten most of it out this morning thanks to this tread's timely reminder just prior to a meeting. Only ripped three pin headers off the old board... Might see if I can't get the new board in and running this evening, but I regret that I forget to take a sound recording of the old levels to use as a baseline. It wasn't 'loud', it was just annoying.

My cabinet plans for this was as much storage based as sound control based, and the plan was to allow for isolating the controller board/power supply in a volume that's separate from the print volume, and I can then vent both through sound baffles as needed.

As for cutting steel accurately, you can do some decent work with decent aviation snips on mid to soft temper sheet, and final clean up with a file. I find the trick is to not 'cut all the way' when squeezing the shears. If you use the very tip of the blades you'll leave a crease, but if you stop short of having the tip come together you can maintain a smoother cut. Harder/springier steel is a tad more prone to binding. But if you can find a local shop who can cut the blanks for you, and you're willing to buy a bunch at once, then the price shouldn't be too terrible if you're happy to do final finishing yourself.

grahamp · Jul 10, 2021

I found a source of black PTFE tubing which might be useful for a dark slide light trap https://fluorostore.com/collections...cts/ptfe-fep-pfa-colored-fluoropolymer-tubing
There are other colours (which makes a change from the natural grey/beige). Compression would be about half the OD, assuming the tube compresses by the full ID of the tube.
Opacity might be an issue. It looks like the smallest black is 1/8 in OD (about 3mm).

Donald Qualls · Jul 12, 2021

I was actually thinking about using "natural" PTFE in the 2 mm I.D. size used for Bowden tube printers, but slitting it in half. This could be retained in a shallow groove by laying the felt over it, so it just acts as a spring like the original finger spring. Opacity doesn't matter this way, and you'll need less force to compress the half-tube. PEX from a plumbing store, likewise split lengthwise, would probably also work for this, and likely is significantly cheaper than PTFE tube.

grahamp · Jul 12, 2021

Ah. I was thinking of PTFE as a slippery surface. The trouble with it being that it is not as flexible as some other materials - it needs to give to pass the dark slide, but spring back to close the gap when the slide comes out. The dark material only has to fill the film side of the dark slide in the light trap, but does have to fill the full gap with the slide out.

I am beginning to think that I need to put together some mini test pieces to see what works in terms of:
easy passage of an inserted dark slide,
light tightness when inserted and withdrawn,
bounce back from being compressed by the dark slide for weeks (holders are usually stored with slides in),
and friction wear resistance (how many dark slide removals per year is normal?)

I am not ruling out good old fashioned felt, possibly staggered from each side of the gap. Anything I use needs to be at least as good as that.

Ironically, the 3D printing of parts aspect is quite straightforward by comparison!

grat · Jul 12, 2021

I was thinking two angled rubber flaps, one from the top, one from the bottom.

Donald Qualls · Jul 13, 2021

Well, again, you can buy finger spring stock (in strips, like piano hinge, cut to length yourself). There's probably a good reason it's been used in dark slide felts for a hundred years.

grahamp · Jan 8, 2023

I have been stuck at home for the past week or so due to the storms on the West Coast (California), so I put together a camera mount for my M605 enlarger. This enlarger has a large steel stud as the head mounting, so the design is basically a cylinder to fit over the stud with a second cylinder merged in to provide extra strength for the locking bolt (from the enlarger head). For what I'm planning, a basic 1/4-20 bolt in the end for a quick release plate should be enough. The holes were made tight enough to self-thread the bolts. The inside of the core is domed to provide clearance for the bolt head and make it printable without supports.

I'd like to mount one of my Mamiya C cameras eventually, but this test version is best limited to cameras of 35mm SLR
dimensions. The source is in OpenSCAD format, so extending it or increasing the wall thickness is easy enough.

grahamp · Jul 1, 2023

I just put together a lens board adapter so I can use Wista/Technika type boards on my Galvin 2x3. The Galvin uses 5" square boards, with the inside of the front standard frame just accommodating the W/T board circular opening.. This was my first time using heat-set sockets, and I think I allowed a touch too much clearance, but they seem to have stuck.

When I did an inventory I found I had boards from Linhof, Wista, ShenHao, Nikon, and some nameless ones. All slightly different in the real light trap ring.

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My next photo project is a 2x3 sheet film spiral for my Jobo 1500 tank. I'm using Flashforge's ABS Pro in white, and the initial test at 0.016 layer height is giving a really nice minimal texture and a slick feel. I am still thinking of doing an acetone vapor treatment to seal the surface.

Does anyone have any experience using acetone vapor on this material? I have kept some test parts and rafts I can use for experimentation, but some idea of how it reacts would keep the surprise element down!

grahamp · Jul 15, 2023

Here we have a 4x5 film holder back for the Galvin 2x3 monorail. While I have enough 2.25x3.25 film holders and a roll-film option for this camera, I usually have a range of film stocks in 4x5 holders available. So being able to draw on these and get something larger than x9 is attractive. The Galvin is limited to a 90mm x 90mm aperture in the rear standard, so the 4x5 format is not fully used, but this shallow adapter retains plus and minus 15 degrees of rear tilt, which is fine for my needs. The geometry won't really support a full 4x5 expansion back.

I doubt that it is of wide appeal, but I am going to find it useful. There are a couple of things to tweak - the bungee cord pass-though was too tight for the cord, hence the wire. The cord should run in a loop. So I am calling this my 'working prototype'! The ground glass holder and the cord grips come from Morton Kolve's WillTravel cameras. The source for the back is in OpenSCAD.

Back with 4x5 film holder inserted. Note the clearance for the rear latch.

'
Back tilted until it hits the swing bolts.

grahamp · Nov 7, 2023

I've been doing a fair bit of 6x12 using my Will Travel with a 90mm f8 Super Angulon, but I would like to use longer lenses. Unfortunately my 4x5 Wista has a fixed spring back that does not want to accept the 6x12 holder. So, I decided to make a Graflok replacement. It uses the same back catches as the Wista (and probably some other Japanese 4x5 wood field models), and is the same thickness as the Wista back. The Graflok elements were reverse engineered from the one on an M.P.P. VII.

I added a bungee sprung ground glass back (Will Travel part - nice to have interchangeability) so I don't have to carry two backs to do 6x12 roll and 4x5 sheet.

It seems to be working well. There are a couple of areas I might address if I print another one, but it meets my needs.

6x12 RFH clipped in place. The bungees can also be used.

Back with a ground glass frame retaining a film holder. The glass has not been fitted at this point.

I could have gone hunting a slide-in Cambo 6x12 back, but they are not cheap. I can get a lot of film instead!

Xylo · Nov 7, 2023

grahamp said:
I could have gone hunting a slide-in Cambo 6x12 back, but they are not cheap.

You could have a go at this project

6x12 roll film back for 4x5 cameras by ekech

Roll film back for shooting 6x12cm format with 4x5 cameras. The basic idea is borrowed from the chinese DaYi / ShenHao roll film backs. Main design principle is to keep it as simple as possible and avoiding special or exotic third party parts or tools. Third party parts: 2x rods or tubes with a...

www.thingiverse.com

I don't know how good it is, but it does look fine.

3D Printing film cameras and parts

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