Three-Axis Camera Slider From 3D Printer Parts

May 3, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

There’s a great reason 3D printers are made with things like extruded aluminum rails and other commodity, off-the-shelf parts. These things are designed not only for ease of construction and prototyping, but they’re also fairly strong especially given how modular they are. And they are excellent platforms for other projects as well. [CNCDan] has been using plenty of on-hand 3D printer parts to build a three-axis camera slider to film parts of his other projects, and this video documents his build and the latest upgrades to this platform.

After sorting out some issues with underpowered motors by improving their gear ratios, he found that many of the sizes and clearances on the existing platform changed enough that he needed to redo other parts of the carrier, including the mounting plate. He cut a new plate from steel and pressed bearings in, and then started putting together the other axes including a quick release mechanism for his camera. With a camera that weighs about 1.4 kg, getting the motors to move the camera smoothly was its own challenge. He re-worked all of his driver code over the course of a few weeks and eventually got his new system working much better than the original version.

With everything said and done, the camera slider can be controlled wirelessly with a GUI on another computer. Everything runs on an ESP32, and the slider can support other cameras besides his heavier one, including smartphones. He notes that this wasn’t the easiest way to build a project like this, but worked for him eventually because he had the parts and tools on hand to make it work. He’s also put the project files up on a GitHub page for anyone interested. Camera sliders like these have some niche uses as well; take a look at this high-speed camera slider for some examples.

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This Is A 3D Ink Jet Printer

August 5, 2021 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

We spend a lot of time thinking of how to create 3D objects, but what about being able to print full color graphics on the objects we create? This isn’t just multicolor, this is full-color! Here’s one elegant solution that uses ink jets to print full color images on 3D terrain models.

Admittedly we are very late to the party on this one as the technology was spotted on season 22, episode 7 of How It’s Made that aired way back in 2013. The segment shows terrain models — think of the physical contour map under glass that you might see at a National Park or at the main lodge of a ski resort. It’s easy enough to envision how the elevation is carved out of foam by a CNC. But the application of color printing to those surfaces is what caught our eye this time around. It’s a custom rig that a company called Solid Terrain Modeling built for this purpose. Since the height at any point on the work material is already known from the milling process, four ink heads (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) have been added to individual Z-axis actuators, applying a raster image as they traverse the surface.

Part of what makes this work is the post-processing steps that follow milling. The model is very carefully cleared of debris before being sprayed with primer. Another coat of an undetermined material (“a specialty coating to receive the ink”) gets the piece ready for the ink. The final step after printing is a protective clear coat. In the How It’s Made episode, buildings and other structures are then 3D-printed and added.

It seems like the trick is to get the heads to have as small of a footprint as possible for clearance when printing in sloped areas. We’re not experts in all the available consumer ink-jet printers out there, but finding a setup where the heads are separated from the reservoirs would be key. Watching this segment made us so excited to think of the person/people who got to hack this rig together as part of their job.

Looking for other ways to abuse ink jet parts? [Sprite_TM] came up with a way to make them handheld so you print on anything from latte foam to your buddy’s forearm. There’s no better name for that than the Magic Paintbrush.

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A 3-Axis Paper Cutting Mini Laser

March 16, 2014 by Nick Conn 29 Comments

LaserCutter

Laser are awesome, and so are projects that use lasers. A recent Instructable by [kokpat] gives an overview of how to create a fully functional laser paper cutter using CDROM stepper motors and an Arduino.

What is special about this build, is that it showcases how easy it can be to build a 3-axis mechanical system used for laser cutters, CNC machines, and 3D printers. Using a stepper stage that consist of a motor screw with a nut slider based carriage, the mechanical system can be put together quite easily and cost effectively. Luckily, from an electronics and software perspective, everything is quite standardized with the proliferation of the RepRap and similar machines. Simply pick any three stepper drivers, find the most pertinent firmware, and voilà! You’re done! Well, almost. Don’t forget a 100mW violet laser!

We have seen a ton of really cool laser cutters before, but this has to be one of the cheapest. See the laser cutter in action after the break.

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