It took me a couple of days to get to it, but I managed to sit down and design the flashlight mount for the cheap little camcorder mount/stabilizer, and then get it printed on the trusty 3D printer. I designed it in six parts, mostly so the height/angle of the flashlight beam could be adjusted to match the center of the camcorder’s field of view.
The shocking part? Everything fit perfectly, with no modifications needed at all. The parts all fit together tightly when cleaned up from the standard printing schmutz (mostly from the supports necessary for ‘suspended’ pieces,) the flashlight snapped neatly and firmly into the two mounts that were perfectly spaced, the entire rig slides tightly onto the camcorder stabilizer, and the beam adjustment works exactly as intended. This is unprecedented for me – usually I have to tweak and reprint something.
Well, okay, one caveat: I forgot to add a mounting socket on the bottom to allow using it with a monopod or tripod. This is a simple piece to add onto the rig, the weak point being that it won’t have mounting pegs because the sides are already printed. It will be glued into place, but I’ll probably also add a few screws in from the sides since this will have to be sturdy.
Now, the camcorder mount/stabilizer is a pretty common model and so the rig that I designed should be able to be used by others, and I will probably upload it – but the flashlight isn’t, and the mounts are very specific to its design, so perhaps not a lot of people would be able to use it anyway. Unless they’re semi-adept in Blender or some other 3D design program and can do the necessary modification for their own flashlight (mine is a Duracell 700 Lumen 3 C-cell zoom LED that appears to be discontinued.) And of course, how many people need the powerful zoom flashlight to be able to video critters at night?
This is the rig on its side so we can see the screw for adjusting the height of the beam – I snagged this nut and bolt off of Thingiverse rather than attempt to design my own, since I know I can’t. The rear flashlight mount isn’t even attached to it – the mount just slides up and down easily and sets atop the screw.
The big question, naturally, is: Does it actually work? Well,
Again, this is without a monopod or tripod, held slightly above waist high and usually just leaned against my belly. The monopod mounting socket is already printed but not yet glued to it.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, there is another video option, but that’ll be along a bit later on, after we greet the new year. Patience…