One Day Builds: Micro Tripod

    Growing up I had one of the little, flexible "Gorilla" tripods. It worked alright but after a year of light use, some of the ball sockets cracked (made of ABS) and the legs no longer held their shape. The unit was also very bulky given what it could do. This past year at work, I was setting up a coolant manifold on a milling machine and the LocLine I was using reminded me of that old tripod. I had a planned a hiking trip to Vermont coming up and had been thinking about buying or making a tripod to shoot some time lapses.

    I threw together this little tripod in maybe an hour. It's printed on a FormLabs Form 2 in their Durable resin. I had wanted the LocLine to snap into the printed hub, which it does, but the printed material creeps too much over time and the LocLine flops around in the socket; it doesn't stay in position. I solved this by epoxying the first section of LocLine to the printed part. The screw on top is just screwed into the printed part, into printed thread. The short legs work well for most situations, and can always be extended if I feel the need for longer legs. Made of delrin, the LocLine shouldn't see any degradation over time, even if used in the Sun a lot. It's also easy to buy anywhere in the world. As it turns out my phone is much better at taking time lapses than my camera, but luckily the tripod is versatile.