any follow focus plans out there?

Cephalectomy

Cephalectomy

Active member
I couldn't find any and saw someone ask too so there probably isn't but by chance is there any follow focus plans out there? I'll pay the 300 for the indie focus if i have to but if i could get one made for a 3rd of that price that would be ideal. Thanks! :)
 
I am planning on building one in the next few weeks. I found some info in various old forum post through google searches.

I will post all the info as I build it. I will probably be working mostly from the indiFOCUS desgin as it seems pretty simple.
 
I dug deep into the bowls of google yesterday for right angle gearbox ideas and found very little. Well, I found very little that would make this a worth while DIY project $$ wise.

I am off to Kaman Industrial today to see what they have. So far, they have been able to get me every bearing and other piece I have ever needed.

The main issues for the gearbox are:

1. Needs to be small, but not expensive.

2. The gears need to have no backlash (probably not a big problem with low rpm).

3. The gear ratio... For a follow focus, I have seen people say 4:1, 3:1, and 1:1. I honesty have never used a FF, so if anybody can advise me here, that would be great.

The other parts of the FF are basic to find/build. So once I find a good low-cost gearbox the rest is history.
 
After looking at the cost of parts to build a FF, I am thinking that Tim Ovel's indifocus is worth the money. The time spent to build a similar FF would not save me enough $ to make it worth while. It would be like paying myself $5 an hour to research and build one.

I also hear that he is a great and helpful guy. That is always a selling point for me. After all my DIY projects, it is hard for me to say this, but I'm scrapping the idea and am off to buy the indifocus.

:)
 
Sorry, here is about all I found. The bottom one is probably the one I would use.

Some gears. You would have to buy the shafts and other goods:
http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/gbm.cfm

Random right angle gear. Nothing much, but nice to glance at to keep the brain moving:
http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Mechanical-Engineering/2-007Spring-2005/AADC811A-CC67-457E-A88D-0B07768B922F/0/rag_proces_plans.pdf

This one would be way to much $$$, but it is pretty:
http://www.neugartusa.com/Produkte/wpls.html

This one could work, but I didn't see any sizes given:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43541&TabID=1&C=SEO&U=StaticPages&doy=search&MenuName=BEVELLED%20GEARBOX

I think that this is the one to go with. You will have to email about the price. It comes with plastic or metal gears:
It is about half way down the page. It is the minature bevel gearbox: 314.
http://www.rinomechanical.com/hitorque.htm

Here is the detail of it in pdf
http://www.rinomechanical.com/pdf/D032.pdf
 
twocik23 said:
I think this is something that has to made from scratch. It doesn't seem that hard to make, I think the hardest part would be is making the gears 90 degrees. This is done with a bevel gear.
Click to expand...

I agree. You could also use a miter gear.

I guess I like to look at how much I will be saving and divide that by the number of hours required for googling, driving, building, and rebuilding. In this case I figured I would be paying myself about $5 an hour. Plus, I am a little crunched for time at the moment. I would like to see what comes out of it and encourage you to keep looking though.
 
This is the part that's hard about being an inventor, trial and error. Now if you're successful with it, not only can you sell it later down the road, but if something was to break you would know how to fix it.
 
You can make your own right angle gear mechanisms...problem is that you'll never DIY the tolerances close enough to make it work properly. When I started the R&D on the indiFOCUS last summer I started down that route. Safe to say, I abandoned it pretty dang quick. The tolerance of an angled gearbox is down around .0001" (ten thousands of an inch) That is beyond any DIY project.
In the end that's why I've priced the indiFOCUS at the price I have; it is meant to be affordable so you don't need to max out the credit card to afford it. Also, it's affordable enough so that you decide to buy it rather than build your own. You could, but then you'd really need an end mill and drill press to make the parts---about $2,000---or have a machine shop make them for you---about $75 for each part---do you have a powder coating machine? If not, you can ship them off to a company that will do that---$100 minimum there---and please don't try to paint aluminum, it doesn't hold at all. In the end, hey this sounds like an ad for the indiFOCUS!
 
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