What features would you look for in the ideal slider?

A

ASchear

Well-known member
I'm working on re-designing my previous slider design into something that I can hopefully bring to market. I did mention this in my other thread but figured I'd start a new one since that one got a bit off topic. I'm just looking for a little more user input before I take my concepts and put them into an actual design. Maybe there's an x-factor that I've missed in my concepts.

Here's what we have so far:
  • 24" or 30" in length
  • under 10 lbs, hopefully under 8 lbs in total weight
  • Aluminum / steel construction for strength, durability, and an expensive feel
  • ability to support at least 25 lbs
  • center mountable on a single tripod
  • mountable also on both ends if you so desire
  • linear ball bearing sliding mechanism (like Cinevate's)
  • tool-less tripod or ball head attach / detach (flat mount only, no bowl mount)
  • 100% handmade in the US (all parts machined by / assembled by hand)
Here's some other things we're considering:
  • hands-free operation with a pulley system
  • some kind of "all terrain legs" (I've never used a slider with these type of legs so I'm unsure of how useful or important they are. Could totally use input here. Would they be as essential with a center mount option available?)
  • Trying to get the price into the $500-$600 range, the lowest to my knowledge out there on a linear bearing style slider.
  • NEW: Interchangeable overall length

I could really use some input on other features you might like to see in a slider. I know that the slider market may have hit its peak recently, but I kind of building this thing for myself first, and for others second. It would be nice to make a fortune, but if I don't that's okay. Still, I want to make it as good as it can be.

I'm catering most likely to the wedding videography / student film market with this slider. Not so into the 'extreme sports' market already dominated by GoPro / Rhino slider.
 
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Sounds like a Cinevate slider. What would be the difference? Can you make it with all the tooling in North America for much cheaper than Cinevate? I love buying their stuff because I know its paying for jobs in Canada, plus they get ripped off on almost every design they come up with.... All Terrain slider legs, FF, Pegasus, etc..
 
Aside from the sliding mechanism that my design shares with Cinevate's (linear bearings are nothing revolutionary), and the fact both slide back and forth, they'll be pretty different - mainly how mine will share that superior sliding mechanism but be center mountable on a single tripod. This is, I believe the best feature of my design. It's mechanism is similar to the Atlas 30, and I'm looking at bringing it to market at nearly half the price.

I assume you've used one with the all-terrain legs. Do you have any insight as to how useful something like that is? I rarely find myself sliding on slightly uneven surfaces that the short legs would be able to compensate for, so I do wonder how useful it would be to design something new to serve that purpose. All terrain legs like those of Cinevate or Rhino would not work on my design.
 
The part I like about the atlas 30 is that it can change the lengths of the rod to suit your needs and it is made for heavy camera setups (for lighter cameras I used the atlas 10) but being centre mounted can I change the rods to be 60" or is the length stuck with the centre mount setup. Also 24" seems really short for such a heavy duty shuttle. I'd used the Red camera with an Atlas 10 but the camera is almost 12" wide once rigged with everything.
 
I would be afraid to personally center mount anything longer than 36" due to the risk of tipping the tripod and / or ruining a tripod head. If mounted at either end, the maximum length we could go while maintaining any reasonable payload would be 48" at which it could support about 10 pounds. At 60", according to the calculations, it would only support 5 pounds (both of these loads must also account for the carriage weight, which may be 2-3 pounds). This is compared to 24" where we can theoretically support ~80 pounds.

Interchangeable lengths are certainly not out of the question, since the majority of cost is contained in the linear bearing assembly and the carriage. We could easily add in a low cost kit, maybe ~$100 for each different length, to change lengths between 24", 30", 36", 42", or 48". It would not be quite as easy of a change as the Atlas 30, but fairly easy nonetheless. I've seen that it takes about 2 minutes to switch out the rods on the Atlas 30. It might take 10 minutes on ours. Thanks very much for your thoughts!
 
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I get that 60" is way to long for centre mounted. What I was wondering is if the end blocks were attached to the centre plate and therefore stuck at a certain length?
 
So if I get this correct, the way you will change lengths is by adding completly new rod system? Say I wanted to go from 36" to 48", I will have to swap them out?
 
Yes, you'll retain the end blocks and main carriage, and swap out the steel rods and support pieces to the length you want. I don't think that's anything revolutionary though since Cinevate's and Rhino's products can already do it. The only drawback is the longer you go, the less of a payload you can handle.
 
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