<<PHOTO - system hero>>

For the last year or so, I’ve had this motorized camera slider that allows me to get nice, cinematic dolly shots in my basement. I love the additional capabilities it has given me in making YouTube video (high stakes stuff, I know), but after using it a while, I of course decided I wanted more.

The camera slider is sort of 1.5 degrees of freedom (DOF). It slides side to side, and you can set it up so that it also pans, but that pan position is just a geared relationship to the sliding action. Soooo, ultimately what I want are 3.5 more DOFs of camera movin goodness.

But the focus of today’s post is just on one of those axes, the one that’ll take things up and down. And this was the degree of freedom that really prompted me to want to tackle this project.

One of the most time consuming tasks with my current slider setup is adjusting the height of the tripod it’s all on top of. So I really wanted something that could raise and lower my camera, without me having to lift a finger.

And this scissor jack is the design I decided to go with for that.

<<PHOTO - Full system shot>>

On top of my Z-axis will be my camera, and three, yet-to-be-designed rotational axes. Because those axes are still just the Fusion equivalent of stick figures, I had to allocate a weight budget for them to set a max payload for my Z-axis.

I decided to give the collection of things up top a limit of 5 kilograms, or a little over 10 pounds. I feel confident I can design my mostly 3d printed rotational axes to fit within this limit.

And I wanted my Z axis to be able to carry this 5kg up and down a distance of 200 millimeters…and I’m pretty darn happy to report, it does exactly that!

If you’ve ever used one of these fellas, you know that I’ve opted for speed.

But luckily, camera robots aren’t usually known for their speed. I am only targeting a max acceleration rate of 0.5 m/s $^2$, or less than 0.1 g…this is right up scissor lift alley.

In terms of velocity, with the total travel of 200mm, and acceleration capped at 0.5 m/s $^2$, I figure it will just get up to whatever it can get up to :)….in no way, shape, or form is this thing aimed at speed.

What it IS after is stability, and I’m feelin pretty confident that my scissor jack is going to give me that.

At it’s core, it functions in a very similar way to the jack shown above. The most significant difference (at least in terms of conceptual design…obviously there are some significant differences between something that lifts a car and something that lifts a camera) is that I’ve ditched the threaded rod, in favor of a winch mechanism.

<<PHOTO -Winch mechanism>>

For either mechanism, the goal is to drive these two outside links toward each other.