Afternoon all!
Again, apologies for the lack of posting in this thread, it's been a while since I was able to post anything on account of not having much time to dedicated to the design.
I have arrived at what I feel is what I want to start fabricating, so this is a great milestone for me. I have made a number of design changes from the renders that are posted above; the main one being that I eventually went for a U shaped rear standard support as suggested by
@stevelmx5, and indeed, into this I incorporated rear tilt as a movement. It'll be made from laser cut, 4mm thick Aluminium which I feel should be sturdy enough. The particular alloy is among the stronger variants of aluminium, and there will be a design tweak to come that I can make to the wooden frame of the rear standard that should stop it swaying side to side. The uprights will be 35mm deep and 4mm thick, so I feel this should be plenty sturdy enough.
I also went back to a dovetail design, and for a few reasons. 1) I feel it looks marginally better than a rectangular profile clamping mechanism - just my taste I guess. 2) Having bought some precision optics mount rails for work that are also based on a dovetail design, and feeling how sturdy these are, I was convinced I should adopt the dovetail. 3) It means the clamp tightening axis is horizontal, rather than vertical. This is important because it means I can continually turn the tightening screw in the vertical plane, whereas if it rotated in a horizontal plane, the thumb lever on the screw would foul against the bed of the camera before even a full turn could be achieved. 4) In the designs I could think of, this one protrudes out the back of the camera the least, oddly enough.
The focusing will be dual rack and pinion for the front standard, giving a total extension of between 200mm and 1000mm, so a good lens selection range. I've not yet figured out how to keep the rear standard in a given fixed position, but this is something I shall design shortly. At the moment, the rear standard can be extended (only) by about 300mm, but once set there is presently no mechanism to lock it in place. This is to come.
The camera movements are approximately:
75mm front rise, 125mm front fall.
+/- 80mm rear shift
+/- 30 degree rear tilt
Front center tilt and swing are not capped, and will be limited by the bellows - which are yet to be ordered.
I decided not to go with rear rise or swing, however the latter of which can be retrofitted with some relatively simple modifications.
The rear standard clamps I'm inquiring about getting made by a family friend, as said the rear standard metal part is being outsourced, but all other metal parts I aim to make myself.
As said in a previous post, the film holder is still the biggest headache, so I really need to get down to solving the design for this. Fidelity ones are £lol, so I really want to avoid buying one.
Anyway, here are some pics! Many thanks for looking