My Pi Camera Mount for the Ender 3

thingiverse

WARNING: If you print the mounting plate in PLA, it may warp if your bed gets too hot! It's just a little too close to the heater, that's all! I learned this the hard way when I tried printing something in PETG and heated my bed up a bit too high. I had to reprint the mount in Amazon Red PETG at 50% infill to make it more stable. I've tried a few different camera mounts for my Raspberry Pi, but none of them quite did what I wanted. The first one I tried was a simple clip-on design that attached to the X-axis driver cover. It's easy to print and gets out of the way, but it's too close to the model and can be hard to see when you're building something. I liked some of the ideas in sb43201's clip-on mount, but I didn't like how the camera mounted upside down and got in the way of my print head. Plus, the ball and socket system just didn't work for me. So I decided to come up with my own design that I'd actually use. My first attempt was to modify drspod's Ender 3 reinforced Handle, but it wouldn't work with my shelf system under the bed. Eventually, I decided to build my own camera mounting plate and extend sb43201's arm so the camera was farther from the build plate. I also flipped the camera mount itself so it would fit right-side up and ditched the ball and socket for a hinge connector. My design has a few advantages: it doesn't require any screws, just snaps into place with gravity and friction holding it in place. It also mounts above the bed frame so it won't get in the way of my leveling screws or other add-ons I have on my printer. All of the parts are easy to print except for the angle joints, which will need some internal support depending on how you orient them on the build plate. You can just use gravity and friction if you don't want to print the joints at all, but it's nice to have the extra flexibility when aiming your camera. Each joint requires a 12mm M3 bolt and hex nut. I designed the main mount and angle joints in Fusion 360 and remixed the camera holder and longer arm in Tinkercad. The pros of my build are: * The camera moves with the print bed, so you can see exactly what's happening. * The camera is right-side up, which is a big plus. * It has three degrees of freedom for precise aiming. * It's far enough away from the build plate to see most of it. The cons are: * THE MOUNTING PLATE IS TOO CLOSE TO THE BED HEATER WHEN PRINTED IN PLA! * The long boom can cause image blur during fast travels or jerky Y movements (but this isn't a problem if you're using Optolapse). * You might have trouble keeping taller builds in frame with this setup.