The Project begun when we started shooting the official video for Maker’s Asylum. Our friends Mikhail and Riddhi from Hot Rock Films, told us they needed a track to get some good shots of the space. Being makers we made one at the Asylum. We started by going over some open source projects on instructables and got our inspiration from https://www.instructables.com/id/Light-Weight-Tripod-Camera-Slider-for-DSLR/.
Using a lathe and mill in Andheri at a friend’s workshop we machined all the required parts. One mistake we made was that we welded the bearing housing pipes after installing the bearings, hence melted the rubber seals of the bearings inside. Leaving us with a fully made non useable camera track. For a quick fix we 3D printed housings for a new set of bearings and laser cut the bed for the camera. After testing we found that one tripod will not work for our case as there was no counter weight when the camera was on one end. Hence we gave a provision for 2 tripods to distribute weight more evenly and keep the track stable through it’s motion.
Attaching the camera to the track was quite a tedious task. So we made some 3d printed quick release plate and mount at the asylum and solved this issue. In the latest addition to the track, we mounted a DC motor to it. The motor was attached to a pulley which moved the slider back and forth. Using a DPDT Switch and a simple potentiometer we were also able to reverse the direction of the motor at the flip of a switch as well as control the speed of it. This track was used to shoot all the moving shots in the Maker’s Asylum official video.
