Building my own tripod head

I can't disassemble mine because the stickers over the screw heads are too well affixed but here are some pics.

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Note the stops to limit the rotation of the pivots... you dont want a camera to flip down and have the lens smash a leg of the tripod

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A short video...

The cam and the latch lever both have springs in them. The latching lever is attached to the plate with friction fit pins simply pressed into narrow slots.

 
This is great! Work decided to hammer me so I wasn't able to really respond, but this is all fantastic! Thank you for doing this.
 
A Manfrotto 500 series video head would be a great project, and works very well with any kind of photography. I had my tripod and ball head stolen last year and when I bought new, went with the MVH500AH and don’t miss the ball head at all. The only downside is you need an L bracket for portrait orientation with a video head.

Another alternative that might be easier to build is an Acratech Long Lens Head

www.acratech.net

Acratech Long Lens Head for Large Telephoto Lenses

The Acratech Long Lens Head is your solution for a strong and light tripod head. The indexable clamp will allow you can also shoot with your wide angle lens.
www.acratech.net www.acratech.net

For the Arca Swiss plates, cam clamps might be nice and convenient, but your plates must be consistently wide, otherwise they might not hold securely. I use screw clamps on mine and have made several plates for my lenses, but haven’t made a clamp yet since I can get them for less than $20. For the dimensions of the plate dovetails, Really Right Stuff has the dimensions on their website, that is what I use when I made mine. https://www.reallyrightstuff.com/dovetail-standard

For deciding on how to make things, research patents and product manuals, they usually have drawings good enough to get the design process going.
 
Ischgl99 said:
A Manfrotto 500 series video head would be a great project, and works very well with any kind of photography. I had my tripod and ball head stolen last year and when I bought new, went with the MVH500AH and don’t miss the ball head at all. The only downside is you need an L bracket for portrait orientation with a video head.

Another alternative that might be easier to build is an Acratech Long Lens Head

www.acratech.net

Acratech Long Lens Head for Large Telephoto Lenses

The Acratech Long Lens Head is your solution for a strong and light tripod head. The indexable clamp will allow you can also shoot with your wide angle lens.
www.acratech.net www.acratech.net

For the Arca Swiss plates, cam clamps might be nice and convenient, but your plates must be consistently wide, otherwise they might not hold securely. I use screw clamps on mine and have made several plates for my lenses, but haven’t made a clamp yet since I can get them for less than $20. For the dimensions of the plate dovetails, Really Right Stuff has the dimensions on their website, that is what I use when I made mine. https://www.reallyrightstuff.com/dovetail-standard

For deciding on how to make things, research patents and product manuals, they usually have drawings good enough to get the design process going.
Click to expand...

If you dont ever want to switch to portrait mode the acratech is a nice easy cnc build to copy.

But so too is the Manfrotto if you dont care about having flowing edges everywhere. Just a few chucks of aluminum to mill in various ways... add some curves via rotary table and a belt sander. Inset small keys to make the travel limit stops.

IF I were to make one of these that uses mostly die cast parts I'd try to make moulds and cast it in aluminum, or if I was feeling risky I'd try a composite with resins and fillers just to see how closely I could make a copy.
 
I have been thinking about building an Acratech LLH, but too many other things have taken priority. Hopefully some day, the Manfrotto video head is on the large size for hiking with. An L bracket on your camera is the simple solution to switching to portrait mode, no need to design that into the head. I also plan on making a new top plate for the Manfrotto that has an Arca Swiss clamp instead of their video dovetail in it. There are some commercial versions of it out there, but more fun to make it myself.
I made a copy of the Monogimbal by Wimberley that I use quite a bit when doing wildlife, that was a fun project, but I need refine it a bit more since it is not as smooth in operation as it should be. I have been thinking about learning to cast, so might be a good project to build one of these closer to the original.
 
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