Tripod for a Phone (3D Printed) (Connectors, Silly Solutions)

Hi, guys! Sometimes I would really like to take a photo of a landscape or appearance I see. But I don't have a good camera (Even if i did, I wouldn't be able to bring it everywhere heh:). Another problem is that there are some amazing views when it's dark outside so my phone's camera can't take it. But with a long exposure it can more! I bet you can't hold a phone motionlessly over 16 seconds in your hands so I have designed a tripod to take long exposure photos. You can shoot video with it too.

If you have a 3D printer, you can make the same.

To make it you need:

- A 3D printer + filament + software

- My Tinkercad design: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/lpOnWy7xVTi

- Some screws (better self-tapping) or glue to connect parts

Here is my design in Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/things/lpOnWy7xVTi). You can clone it and modify as you want.

Especially you can create your own phone holder or use my universal one (parts E, F and G).

Also you can see holes for self-tapping screws I made in parts A, B and E. I have the screws (2mm) and I think they are very convenient because you just need to make a cylindrical hole and a bit bigger hole and will be able to reassembly the thing many times. You can change their size or remove them and make you own connectors (or just glue all the parts together:) Look at step 3 for more info.

There are still many improvements possible.

This is the most difficult step for me but should be easy for you if you don't get so many troubles too. I can't recommend any general printing settings because my printer now can't afford more than 20 mm/s with 0.4 nozzle and 0.1 layer height. (I'll be reconstructing the printer later). So 0.4*0.1 quality is enough. But I'm also going to tell you about some settings in Ultimaker Cura (It should be similar in other software).

You can use Cura's adaptive layers feature to print the parts faster: enable "Use adaptive layers" checkbox and set layer height to the middle value you want then "Adaptive layers maximum variation" is difference between the minimum and the maximum layer height divided by 2. So if you set layer height to 0.15 mm and the maximum variation to 0.5, layers from 0.1 to 0.2 mm high will be allowed.

Supports should be enabled while printing parts A, B, C, D but I had a problem when Cura added supports in places where they are redundant. That looks awful. If you have the same problem, try to increase "Support overhang angle" in Cura.

If you are printing part G with PLA filament, set "minimum layer time" to over 10 seconds and "minimum speed" to 1 mm/s or the part's edges will go up.

After many failed attempts I have finally printed it all and now we can go to step 3.

As soon as you print all the parts, you can connect them together.

1) Firstly, connect part A and part E any way you've chosen (step 1).

2) Then slip parts C and D on to part B (see the photos).

3) Connect part A to part B as on the photo.

4) Insert part F into part E and fix with the screw G.

Done!

Push the stick in part A until gears are connected. Put you phone into the holder and fasten it. Push the stick a little more to fix the rotation. Now you can shoot steady videos or long exposure photos!

Here is one of the photos I've got with this tripod at 10 p.m. Thank you for reading this instructable, hope you like it :)