"One Perfect Part at a Time"

Uncategorized

Another Project Finished

Yes-sir, completely scratch built from raw ore. NO, not likely. Ha!

This is a little repair project my daughter gave me. It is a ball head for a camera (photography) mount. The bottom of this device screws down on a tripod or studio steady mount.

There is a quick release on the top that is attached to the camera.

The handle bolt is loosened to adjust the angle of the camera and that is where the problem was. There are internal splines in the original handle that were stripped out. It would no longer turn the locking bolt to secure the ball from moving.

I learned all about these spring loaded handles and also how the ball mount itself works in this little project. There are two main types of these handles. Most of us know the “pull the handle to adjust position” type. I have a lot of them on my machine tools. There is a second type called the “Safety” handle where the user must push in against the spring load to engage the handle. That is what I have here. The handle pops back out and drops to a safe position  when not engaged.

So the project was mostly selecting the correct replacement handle. However there was a catch. There is always a catch, right? The end of the original bolt was drilled out and a pin with a tapered cone inserted. It is this cone against an internal ramped surface that pushes up and locks the ball movement.

The machining chore was to drill out the end of the new handle bolt to fit this tapered cone pin. The challenge was to hold the bolt for drilling (without disassembling the handle) and drilling the hard end of the bolt deep enough for the pin to insert.… Continue reading

Chairman of the Boards

I spent last weekend first cutting the grass in nearly 100 degree outside temperature. Then my daughter’s boy friend Doug wanted to build a chair that he saw in a magazine using 2×4’s and 1×4’s . Since I have the tools, benches, etc. I provided the guidance and moral support. Shop temps in the afternoon hit 100 degrees inside.

Chair turned out cooler (looking) than the air temp! Doug kind of gets in the way here for looking at the chair. 🙂

Since last weekend I wrote a few pages I posted in the Pages section. They are so long I thought they were too much to just post. Check “Thoughts on…” and “What will…”.

Categories
NOTE: Log in is for admin and members only, not required to post comments.