Tilt and Pan Camera Mount Remix

thingiverse

I would like to offer my appreciation to hollerer for an outstanding design for his tilt and pan camera mount. I made it with 2 minor changes and a few additions. This is truly an incredible creation! I modified the gears that attach to the stepper motor shafts for a tighter press fit. I found that the fit was loose and would lead to hysteresis and potentially cumulative damage to the gears. To make the change, I measured the dimensions of the shafts on my stepper motors and created parts to "fuse" with the gear STL files in FreeCAD. The additional parts are simply hollow cylinders with an inner diameter that matches the outer diameter of the stepper motor shaft and an outer diameter that fills (overfills) the inner diameter of original gear shaft hole. Uploaded screenshots illustrate the modifications in FreeCAD. As an assembly modification, M3x6mm socket head cap screws hold the stepper motors in place. The screws can be inserted without fully tapping the holes. In order to mount a camera, I made a 1/4" x 20 thread adapter, consisting of a knob that holds a 1/4" x 20 hex bolt (1/2" or 5/8" length) in a housing that connects to the top plate of the original design with 4 M3x16mm socket head cap screws and 4 hex nuts. I also made a case to hold the electronics and to mount the tilt and pan mount to the top of a camera tripod. The case holds an Arduino UNO and 2 stepper motor drive circuits. The Arduino power and USB ports are accessible for power and programming. An auxillary USB port provides power to the stepper motor drivers. A Cat5e (RJ-45) jack provides a connection from the Arduino to the joystick control (+5V, GND, and X and Y axis signals). I plan to supply +5V power for the stepper motor drivers through the network cable and a joystick housing (currently in design). Twelve M2x4mm screws hold the 3 boards on posts that are on the case bottom. The case top provides access for the stepper motor wiring and is held onto the case bottom with 4 M2x19mm screws. The tilt/pan housing is affixed to the case top with 4 M3x12mm socket head cap screws. Gears, the knob, and the knob housing were printed at 100% fill. The case bottom and top were printed at 40% fill. The Arduino UNO code has been uploaded as tiltpan.txt. Download and rename as tiltpan.ino to use the code in the Arduino IDE.