The internet is full of surprises. There’s always a good chance that someone had the same idea as you and made an attempt. Most end up in the digital graveyard but sometimes you’ll find some bones with great potential. If you can find it, you can pick up where they left off and carry the ball forward. That’s exactly what happened here with this 3D model by jjm17.
"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow."
At first glance, the design looks functional and decent. I decided to take a closer look at how everything pieces together.
The design of this clamp is fairly simple. The 3D model came in four parts: the body, clamp section, thumb screw, and nut. It has holes for a couple 6mm OD x 10mm L springs, a 20mm M4 screw, M4 nut, and 1/4″ hex nut. The M4 screw has to be a hex bolt that fits in the hex-shaped thumb knob and turns as a single unit. There’s a space on the bottom of the body that supposedly fits a M4 nut. There’s also space for a 1/4″ hex bolt to secure the nut to a ballhead.
When I tried to put everything together, that’s when I realized that this baby has some serious birth defects. The biggest fault came in the form of the printed nut that was supposed to secure the clamp to the ballhead. The nut surprisingly screwed onto my 1/4″-20 ballhead with no issues. However, it fit very loosely in the hex-shaped space in the body and didn’t secure to the ballhead at all. I’m assuming this design was made to fit a standard 1/4″ metal hex nut that fits glove-tight. Unfortunately, my 1/4″ steel nut didn’t fit either. This probably had to do with the difference in materials for the original design being ABS vs. the carbon fiber polycarbonate blend material I’m using. Regardless of whether or not this securing method worked, I simply didn’t like the idea of the nut being externally placed. This means the nut can easily be dislodged from the clamp and stuck to the ballhead with just an accidental knock-over or drop. The other slot on the body was supposed to fit an M4 nut but the space was huge. After some trial and error with a hex M4 nut, I realized that an M4 square nut required. Even with a square nut, it kept falling out when I was trying to attach the thumb screw.
The other issue I had was that four parts are too many things to print. Ideally, I want a final design to be one or two pieces max. When I have several prints of varying shapes and sizes, it becomes a time and resource sink. It also increases the probably of a print failure or quality degradation when adding more pieces to a design print. This much is obvious with the printed nut not fitting the clamp at all rendering the clamp itself useless. The thumb knob also is quite sharp and hurts my wittle fingers when I turn it. This may be an issue with users down the road.
All in all, the design does work. I weighed it at 23 grams. It uses two springs to push the clamp section away from the body when loosening the thumb screw. It creates a good seal with my peak design plate but I wasn’t able to secure it to my ballhead with the printed or metal nut. The design won’t work as-is and would need some tweaks before being useable. For the lay person, this is a very tall order. That’s where I come in.
Now that I’m done tinkering with this design I have an idea of what I want to do. My goals are: 1) To reduce the overall size and weight. 2) Find a better solution for the securing method. 3) Reduce the number of total parts. 4) Find a less painful thumb screw. Stay tuned for the next post and see how I was able to perfect this design and achieve ultralight perfection! Thanks for reading.
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