The Edelkrone Ortak FlexTILT Head 3D was their first print-it-yourself product and also the first that I bought.
Essentially, purchasing one of the Otrak range has them send to you a small box, in which are all the metal parts for the item. The remaining parts you are then able to 3D print yourself.
The motivations behind this scheme, as I understand them, are that it:
- Saves the cost of producing the parts (tooling/machinery)
- Saves the cost of shipping the parts
- Saves the world from more plastic
- Allows you to have a unique accessory that can reflect who you are
Assuming, of course, you have a 3D printer…
Given that I currently have a few printers, it wasn’t a difficult choice to buy the kit, especially as the kit is £25. In comparison, the full metal edition is £128(!), with the only real difference being that one is all machined metal and has a small bubble level.
So for less than a fiver’s worth of material, along with an hour or so for assembly, you’re saving yourself £103, which makes the whole thing quite a bargain!
Designs
The Edelkrone Ortak FlexTILT Head 3D designs are available for you to download once you’ve purchased the kit. They come as a collection of STL files for opening in your preferred slicer application (I generally use Cura). As part of the download, you get the designs for the individual parts, but also an all-in-one option to print everything in one go. This means that you don’t have to worry about “have I printed the correct number of each thing”. But on the other hand, if that print doesn’t complete for some reason, you’ve wasted a lot more material…
I chose to make my one from the Bronze filament I got from amazon.co.uk as it’s rather nice and shiny, looking quite coppery (or bronzey in fact!). Using the individual files.
Assembly
I’m going to assume here that the downloadable designs are the same as those used for the fully machined parts for the grown-up edition of the Edelkrone FlexTILT Head 2. So the difficulty of assembly of the 3D printed equivalents is going to do down to the accuracy and calibration of your printer – unless you send them off to be manufactured by Shapeways or some such online manufacturer.
For me, there was a little bit of ‘encouragement’ required to get the machined parts to fit properly into the printed PLA parts. Although nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a sharp scalpel blade and a small file. There is also supplied a suitable Allen key for tightening the also-supplied bolts.
It may take a bit of adjustment to get the bolts tight enough to not allow it to ‘droop’ but loose enough to move when you want it to. This also depends on the weight of the camera that you want to put on the thing – the recommended camera load is <2.5Kg.
The only thing I’ve found that may require extra fixing is the top-plate into which the tripod screw is mounted. This is made of two pieces which are basically held together with the adhesive plate. But also there are lips to stop them from moving apart. So for me, it’s actually been fine.
Usage
To be honest, this really is one of the most useful accessories I have!
When mounted on top of a tripod, it will allow you to get your camera to a wider range of positions than normal. For example, on their website, they have shots showing how it can ease getting a birds-eye shot of something in front of your tripod. Also how it can work on a table-top if you wanted a macro shot.
Basically, any shot that might require an unusual angle can be made a whole lot easier with this, the Edelkrone Ortak FlexTILT Head 3D.
The image with the inspirational quote is also my personal Facebook profile header image. 🙂
Available online from edelkrone.com for $29 or edelkrone.eu for £25/€29
If you have a project that may need something 3D printed, feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.