Lens caps are important for protecting expensive camera lenses from damage. Dust, grit, and other nasty things will all quickly spoil the quality of a shot, and can even permanently damage a lens if you’re unlucky. However, lens caps are also lost quite easily. Thus, it’s useful to be able to make your own, and [DSLR CNC DIY] has the low down on how to do it.
The benefit of printing your own lens caps is customization. No matter the oddball size and shape of your lens, when you’re 3D printing your own cap, you can design it to fit. The video also shows off the benefits of being able to embed text right into the body of the cap, so you’re never confused as to which cap goes with which lens. The caps use the metal lever from a binder clip in order to provide the clamping force necessary to hang on to the lens. It’s an improvement over some living-hinge designs that grow weaker over time.
Overall, if you’ve got a bunch of lenses that need a new cap, this could be the project for you. It’s also likely much cheaper and easier than hunting down replacement caps for obscure lenses online. Alternatively, contemplate what you could do with fancy lens adapters. Video after the break.
Ooh, I like the built in label, and will have to look into the spring feature too.
Oh hey, I’ve been doing this with all the old Minolta lenses I pick up second hand.
I put the lens details and my onlyfans link on each lenscap…. makes it really easy to tell when someone borrows one…
i’m borrowing that joke (:
I must say I do hardly ever use lens caps. The lenses just sit glass-down in my camera bag or are in my hand.
I tend to seed the planet with them, so I have the ubiquitous uv filter to protect the lens…
One of the first things I do when I get a lens is glue some hook and loop fastener on the cap. I have a matching piece sewn to the camera strap.
Hmm neat idea, though those tapes love grabbing anything any everything they can hook…
Perhaps upgrade to some concentric ring grooves cut a metal plate in this age of easily available CNC machines – so you can just click them into the matching ring for their lens cap size
This is great but I have one question- are the tips of the wire spring digging into the plastic, possibly creating dust that’s going to end up on the lens?
Given enough time any mechanical parts will generate some amount of dust.
But steel digging into plastic will do it a lot faster than plastic on plastic, I think. I wonder if this could be done using a silicone o-ring as the spring.
Sounds like a great way to get a cap that fits the weird 48mm thread of my Canonet
Now that I think about it I wonder if it scales down to things like TLR lenses I’ve been pressing on film caps for those.
Ok how many of us have thrown out a binder clip ’cause it has bent out of shape? Sure the chromed steel handles tend not to bend out of shape but we don’t repeatedly bend them. I declare bs that this would last any longer than a living hinge, but sure you could replace the “spring”…