‘L’ rig production continues…

Having seen the L rigs here a Kapper asked if there were any going spare for sale. I rushed to the parts bin and assembled all the bits I had … and was quite a few short:

The parts bin was dry of the required gear sizes and most of the key Brooxes parts so after a pause, it is the holiday season after all, here it is:

Fitting the pan servo was a pain. the small differences in the ‘standard’ servo size mean I needed to tweak its housing to get the gears to mesh, the L plate and the BBGG has to filed away a little:

Setting up the pan gear is not as simple as it looks so here is a detail of how it’s done, the spacers are fitted by trial and error so that the driven gear is at the right height to meet the servo gear, this takes a bit of patience:

the counter-tightening of the 2 nuts below the gear is very important, if the gear is not locked in place on the bolt it will rise up the thread and jam. The space is so tight I use long nose pliers to grip the upper nut as I turn the lower.

From the KAPshop gear set I used the 40 tooth as the driven gear and the 10 as the driver, the ratio of 4:1 gives the rig 32 shots to the circle. Fortunately the plastic M10 gears are quite forgiving in alignment. The gear mesh is as good as it needs to be, too tight and the servo will suffer wear and drain the battery, too loose and the rig won’t turn.

…not quite as pretty as its CAD prototype but ready to fly!

and here are the test shots..the pan step and shot interval look like this:

..and the pano..

One thing that drove me nuts was the hidden switch on this rig. I used a ready made battery box with a switch on the back, I thought I could live with this because it is nicely protected from accidental operation :

but in reality its a pain to deal with when things get busy at launch and recovery. I could just about manage with the aid of the thin end of the arm of my glasses but it’s fussy to the point of dangerous. Whilst you un-hitch the 2 ends of Picavet from the line the rig is merrily panning away and trying to twist the whole thing into a skein of gear jamming nastiness as you fumble for the switch…with gloves on…and a falling kite… This will not do!

I have quite a few ex radio switches in the bin so, 47g ugly though it is, it is steel with a sprung detent;  there’s a positive ker..lunk when it’s thrown.  Much better than the neat but useless battery box one.

Without a camera this rig weighs 220g, no lightweight but it will carry a DSLR if it has to.

To keep it simple the rig now has 2 switches, one for shipping: the ‘ isolator’ switch and one for operation:

The instruction manual for the rig:Fixed tilt portrait aspect pano rig for KAP

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