Ho-ho, strange ideas you want, eh?
The gravity/guillotine concept has a name I can't remember...maybe Andrew Davidhazy at RIT has it posted on his site. I have heard of it used with 3 separate color filters (hey, like Neopolitan ice cream!), that sequence past the lens...I just can't remember the surname who it's asociated with.
I usually see those craft sticks (for those too lazy or allergic to clean the ice cream off first) used for little houses. I have some that are half the width and have holes at the ends because they were intended to be laced together for some project. That must have some photographic application.
I just, uh, copied the chapter on shutters from the Kingslake-edited Applied Optics and Optical Engineering 5-volume set - found it in the library at work. They refer to another linear shutter called a 'shooting plane' shutter...I had thought this up myself but dismissed it as too bizarre...turns out it exists. Apparently it's like when I was a kid and I got my sister's boyfriend to put his Ducati motorcycle up on it's kickstand that lifted the rear wheel off the ground. We'd put 2x4 lumber between the tire and the ground, he'd rev up the engine and lean back until the time hit the wood, shooting boards down the driveway.
With a shooting plane shutter, metal plate, similar to a FP curtain shutter, with one or multiple slots, is engaged by two or more idler wheels that accelerate it to speeds up to 500 inches per second. There are 'brushes' to catch the plate at the other side.
Now, I ran into a guy at my last job, a contract engineer, who worked at Chicago Aerial Industries (now ReCon Optical I think). I asked him whether the large mass of the camera was one factor in what allowed hyper springs on big shutters to not blur images. He gave me an interesting concept - at least for leaf shutters, they can bang & clatter all they want at the beginning and end of the motion, because the shutter is closed at those points. You want smooth motion during the open (efficient) phase of the shutter motion.
Small idea - see what's inside a typical disposable camera. Labs are really skittish and inconsistent about who will give you the empties or not. One clown wanted my name phone # & address...I accused him of dragging me into a marketing ploy but he thought it was more like Homeland Security. Last time I went there! Ugh, it never occurred to me there was a third possiblility, but I don't want to think about that.
Big idea - I bought a box of 'Lazy Susan' bearings (plates with bearings) to experiment with a 6-7/16" hole. It's large enough to pass an Aero-Ektar 309/2.5 lens barrel. The idea was to make a 4-leaf or butterfly-bladed shutter with hand rotation. The butterfly type takes more room but doesn't have to reverse direction, just accelerate, open, decelerate. I'm still examining other reversing blade shutters to figure the shape and dimensions to fit the curvature of the Lazy Susan aperture. I'm also doing the geometry for a multi-aperture plate (like on old lenses) that can be rotated into position. Two of these back to back might allow a large Lazy Susan and Lazy Iris to be accomplished in a thin space. I have a 12" Metrogon lens set that is rumored to need less than 1/4" space between....that's part I'm still researching.
Once I get one working, I can probably use the smaller L.S. bearings in the future. I talked to a place that makes photoetched parts to make blades, but don't want to spend that $ right now...I'm looking at spray-painting the clear fronts from CD cases, thin, rigid, lightweight...
Murray
