My bellows design is starting to get more sophisticated. It now has a mount for an optical viewfinder on top. All of the ugly supports are gone from the edge and the lens flange screws on from inside the bellows instead of externally like a pipe flange on the earlier designs. I'm using my old LSU drafting board as a work surface.
I hadn't programmed a Functional language since I wrote LISP programs on a VAX at LSU in the early 1980's. So I had to figure out all of the functions and how to nest them in other functions in order to draw various shapes, create negative cutouts, move them around on 3D space, rotate them, extrude a torus, "drill" holes for screws, etc. All of these functions were based on a set of constants defined at the top of the program so I could easily make global changes to the design by changing a single parameter. You can see part of one of the modules I wrote to create the lens mount in the photo.
The newly printed objects always need a bit of cleanup but it's not nearly as bad as the earlier designs. I used the calipers on the left a lot during this project. They were given to me by my high school physics teacher Mr. Richard in 1978 so I'm glad I hung onto it for 46 years.
A progression of designs throughout the last year. The early ones didn't have an optical viewfinder mount and the lens flange was screwed on from the outside. In the middle design you can see that I start printing the screw holes to the interior and rotate them 45 degrees so they're close to the corners of the bellows. The last one has the threaded flange to screw the helicoid to mounted on it. One of the interesting design challenges was shaving excess material out of the interior to prevent vignetting when the lens was extended.
Using a few clamps to hold the lens mount snugly to the body while I rivet it in place using stainless pins. After it's securely in place, I line the interior with black flocking I got from an astronomy supply store that is used to absorb extraneous light inside of telescopes.
The final product ready to be tested! I mounted a Nikkor-SW 65mm f/4 lens on the front and a Horseman optical viewfinder from an old press view camera on the top.
A self portrait I took in of the small sailboat I'm building. I had just installed the cypress seats and the black locust trimmed centerboard case. All of the following test photos were taken on Kodak T-Max 400 film & developed in Xtol 1:1 in my kitchen.
Diesel! My friend's Catahoula Cur hanging out near Brookhaven, Mississippi.
Diesel, Dwight & Ross in front of "The Condo".
The family farm: A picture of my mom's childhood home in Kentwood, Louisiana.
The final verdict is that this was time well spent. I learned a lot about 3D printing, designing objects from scratch & I was able to cobble together a functioning camera from a bunch of disparate parts. I assumed that some of the guys who visit these forums might have an interest in 3D printing so I thought I would share my first attempt at it in case any of the info was useful. Now on to my next project...