I'm building a case/housing for NEX, how you want it be?

F

foggyflute

New member
Hi,
My English is far from good, so bear with me, sorry. Just call me "Foggy"

I'm a full time designer and hobbyist photographer from Vietnam. I'm not making any gears for camera before, but I'm experienced with modding, building parts for RC helicopters and boats: plastic, carbon, composite, alu, steel, etc... with my friend, who is an engineer.

Recently, I see a large demand of Nex housing and cage, especially when the new hack available.

What I trying to build here is an aloy housing for nex5n:


  • Full body housing.
  • Aloy (aircraft grade, hardened, anodize black) - precision CNC from a block.
  • I want it look like a RED camera body from outside.
  • Silent cooling fans with fan speed control, maybe dust filter to block dust and noise too.
  • All button accessible, some may under button extender build in the housing.
  • Ports available and have lock to keep cord in place.
  • Can mount on rail system or fluid head, and also can mount a lot of stuff on it.
  • Quick release and lock the body in place.

What I want to hear from you:


  • Which camera I should focus on first: Nex 5N, Nex 7, or waiting for 5F, 6 or anything else like GH2, GH3?
  • Most of you prefer cage or housing?
  • Include plate and mount for rail system or not? Modular or just screw hole so you can mount yours on?
  • Battery for fans: Canon battery or Eneloop or anything else?
  • You guys will put functional first, or the look (to please clients) first or balancing between them?
  • What you dont like about current products available on market right now?

Quality of finish product will be at level can hold up against products from top companies - I can sure RC helicopters part quality is not far behind, maybe even better in models using gasoline.

Don't suggest me cloning anything, of course all previous products on market give me insipration and design clue, and I learning a lot from them. I can build one myself with feature you demands, but I'm not doing clone.

Price: I can not promise anything at this stage, but housing will be around 800-900 usd, cage will be around 400-500, I will try to keep cost down without cutting quality, but I will not run down to "mass produced in china" level.

I willing to work on mattbox, follow focus and many things, but let just start with this housing project first.
Thanks for reading.
 
Here's one of proposal design, I'm not going for this look, but function will remain:


 

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Here are my answers! I think this would be great!

Which camera I should focus on first: Nex 5N, Nex 7, or waiting for 5F, 6 or anything else like GH2, GH3?

NEX 5n!!! As it will be the hackers first venture.

Most of you prefer cage or housing

  • Housing
  • Include plate and mount for rail system or not? Modular or just screw hole so you can mount yours on?
  • Just a screw hole
  • Battery for fans: Canon battery
  • You guys will put functional first, or the look (to please clients) first or balancing between them?
  • Split between

 
@bighappyface: thks for the input.

There's a wondering at cooling capable of this housing over the thread at eoshd, so I copy the answer here for you guys too:

Well, I'm a former overclocker that hold a few world records before (we pushing computer processor clock like from 1.5GHz to 3.5GHz under LN2 or dry ice), so I even better at cooling solution than with CNC things
Here's my solution:

DSC_0247.jpg


Normally, under these extreme narrow space like this, the most useful options is using heat pipes (you can see it under every laptop) , but unless I'm making thousands of this, no company gonna make custom heat pipes for me.

Using 3m thermal tape will make it easy, clean and clear, but pry the heat sink out is gonna be pain...

Using thermal cream will leave nasty and sticky devices after that, but it's easier if you need your normal camera quick. And I'm not think about making clamps before so I dont know if I can making clamp or not

I can even build watercool, but it's ridiculous for this thing.

Overall, there's no perfect solution, I only have a NEX5K next to me right now, so I dont know how bad the situation is.
 
foggyflute said:
Normally, under these extreme narrow space like this, the most useful options is using heat pipes (you can see it under every laptop) , but unless I'm making thousands of this, no company gonna make custom heat pipes for me.
Click to expand...
Sorry if that sounds kinda naive, but why not use existing CPU/GPU cooler/heat sinks? I mean...there are plenty of different designs, and they are transporting the heat from a small area to a big heatsink; could make an fan unneccesary, or at least reduce the needed rotations/min a.k.a. noise;

of course that'll make the design bigger, but hey - you called it "look like RED body" ;)

*edit: another point...in your sketches there's shown that the fan is placed at the lower part of the heat sink...since the display is in the way...perhaps consider a sidewards placement? since heat does not sink but raise...
 
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@flashbeast

Desktop cpu heat sink is large, gpu heat sink (for one slot cards) but it's hard to find because they goes straight to trash bin if the card die, aftermarket gpu heatsink is available but always large and long (no one buy them if they just work as the stock one). I can cut it out from alu/copper block fine, so why not do it. And check out my thread at eoshd, Richard Gale said the heat is not that bad. I will check out Chinese supply to see if any heat sink available at size I can modded to fit the space we have there.

Yes, it's better for cooling if we place the fan at top, but we have microphone up there, right? So fan will making noise that get to the mic, I dont want that. With close and small housing like this, the hot air going up force is not any where near the level can affect fan performance, so it's alright to place it anywhere we want. I will think about sideway :)
Fan will come with filter to block dust and decrease the noise, of course with reduced voltage for lower rpm.

@bighappyface: I think about a month or two until you can see the final design.
 
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