Sunday, September 20, 2020

1/4 inch camera mount without opening it up, or putting any scratches or glue marks

How do we add a 1/4 inch camera mount on to a very expensive strap carried LIDAR scanner 
Without opening it up, or altering the plastic or even putting any scratches or glue marks on the outside such that it can be returned or sold later. 



My Initial Wooden mount worked really well. Even allowing the scanner to fit back into it's foam case without modification. 

The only external points that are solid is the 2 metal tabs for the carrying strap, so I used those with a thin strip of double stick tape that in sheer mode with the tabs holding things from peeling up made it incredible secure. 


Original Wood mount vs Delrin. 



Camera mount in Delrin. 



Finished Camera mount in Delrin. 



Here is the  Finished Camera mount in Delrin. 



  Below are attempts to laser cut Delrin just a bit too thick.  



 

FARO Focus - Architectural LIDAR - Power and Ethernet control adapter





This is the Faro connector, and the massive aluminum block that's part of it. It's 150mm tall or more. 




Here is the camera and the connector. 

Notice there are two small #2 metric screws that hold a protective cover, 
I chose to use these two to attach my connector, making it much harder to change cameras but makes for a simple secure connection. 



My first pass was generating a model in OpenSCAD and then 3D printing it, but the accuracy of the FDM PLA printer was just not good enough. 
Second pass was testing the size and shapes in the Laser cutter which worked very well, but we can really use soft wood for a connector. 


This is my first pass in Acrylic using the Engrave function to product  a 2.5D  cut, there is no depth control like on a CNC but by adjusting the grey level in the image being engraved and power levels better than 1mm depth control can be achieved which is good enough in this application. 



I also tried Black Delrin but it wasn't cutting well enough to be useful. 






Right:  is My first attempt in Acrylic, it sort of fits and it promising but has a long way before it's fine tuned. 

Left: is a much later version of the connector, using pins of Michaels and 2 layers of acrylic sheet glued with the pins bonded and bent between layers holding them ridged. 










This is our Robot mounting place, with a cup, 
In later versions this is glued together with the alignment pins 
The hole on the right is for the battery compartment release.