3D printable gadgets: Edelkrone’s camera dolly/head

A future where products and gadgets are designed and sold with a ‘print it yourself with a 3D printer’ option is not too far away.

Picture this – You order a floor lamp online for your living room and you receive a tiny package a day later that only contains a bulb, a socket and a power cable. You then download a few files from the internet and send them across to your printer to print. Out comes the lamp base, stem and a few screws and nut. You then assembly them all up, ikea style, and voila! - you’ve got yourself a floor lamp. Imagine the savings in terms of product and shipping costs, imagine the customization that is now open to you – changing product color, materials and modifications etc. 

The benefits will not only be for you, the customer. The time to market for new products can be significantly reduced and the barrier to entry for small time designers with no knowledge of or access to mass production is lowered. All that will be required for a successful product will be excellent printable industrial designing skills along with, of course, some marketing skills.

Elkerone, a Turkish company that specializes in camera equipment and gears, has a new product line which takes a step towards this future.  I was on the look-out for a cheap dolly and slider for use in my projects but was pretty disappointed with the options that were available with products either too low in quality or too high in pricing. Elkerone, however, was offering printable version of their well reviewed but pricey dolly so I decided to take the plunge. Skater3D is a dolly for capturing curvy camera motions and slider shots and FlexTILT Head 3D is a pan and tilt head that compliments the Skater3D.

Building them was quite straightforward and I’ve captured my build experience:

So, what are my final thoughts on these two products:

Though the jig is functional and relatively cheap, there are a few key issues that I have with them which makes it’s a bit difficult to recommend them to a wider audience.

1.       The biggest issue that I have with the Skater3D are its wheels. Tighten them too much and the wheels don’t rotate, too loose and the middle nut pops right out after a few movements. This demands the need to keep an Allen key around at all times which is super annoying. Also, loose wheels significantly reduces the stability of the jig and the shake is quite visible in the video output.

2.       Larger lens cannot be used with this set-up even if the total weight falls within specs. A larger/longer lens will cause the set up to fall over as seen below.

3.       The shots that are generated are not very smooth even if the wheels and other screws are optimally tightened. Some post processing is required in the video editor. I recommend the wrap stabilizer effect in Adobe Premiere but even this can only improve the end product so much. I am yet to experiment with a glass bottom but I suppose that could improve the quality a bit more. Nevertheless, extra effort and time is needed to fine tune and experiment to achieve a perfect shot.

As much as this is an exciting step toward buying and printing gadgets, a good and well-structured industrial design is imperative. I expected a better designed product from Elkerone for the price tag but sadly we will have to wait for the next revision, hopefully. I’ll still be using the jig for some quick b-rolls and will also be working on some modifications to improve the overall stability. I will put up another post if I succeed.