Please help with CAD design

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by anthony113

Al, hmm i have very little experience when it comes to making things like this. if you would be able to recommend a list of parts i might need and a way to go about making the casing or structure to hold all this stuff in place and mount to the camera i would be very appreciative. thanks!

Anthony,
I will look around but I am up to my eyeballs in a special project at the moment. This thing does not need to be that elaborate. A section of right angle aluminum, a few bevel gears for the right angle drive, some rod for the shafts, maybe a couple of small bearings, a small belt, (with pulleys for round belt you can use an o ring for this part) and a gear big enough to go around the the focus ring with a matching little drive gear, a hand full of set screws and other hardware, a plate to mount everything on that attaches to the bottom of the camera and a weekend ought to do it. There are little junk stores in most big cities that sell just what you are looking for or there are a lot of stores on line. Check out Small Parts, American Scientific or any of the online sources for RC car and robot parts and you should be able to pull it all together. You have a good start since you have seen a real one up close and you have plety of pictures. Just reverse engineer the parts, this should be fun. I know you can do it, don't be discouraged by the finished look of the part you have. It does not have to be designed that well to work for you. Remember the part you showed is engineered for constant professional use over years of service life with no failures and ease of movement from camera to camera throughout it's life. You can build a camera specific part for far less that will work great for you application and if it fails every so often, you fix what broke or slipped and reshoot.