Fitting components together for operating a camera in a particular environment is a fairly common need. There is an endless way to fit a camera to robot arms, ground vehicles, air vehicles, or even with people in specific scenarios. One of the common components is the 1-inch (22mm) ball mount. Such systems have in common the use of a 1-inch ball (often with a ribber ring around its equator or with ridges) and a rod on which something can be attached held in place with a butterfly clamp.
There are a lot of preassembled camera mounts (especially various suction cup mounts) that use these components. Someone not familiar with this system might not recognize that these parts are often interchangeable. They can be mated with components from other systems or even have individual components added to fit a need. Let’s take a look at a suction cup mount that I’ve often used.
This mount has a few points of articulation. Someone can adjust the angle between the base and the arm, the arm and the ball head for the phone mount. And the ball-head phone mount has its own high range of adjustments. While this is sold as an atomic piece, one can start to take it apart without tools. The arm is connected to the suction base with a ball that has a quarter-twenty screw on it (this is the same size used my many tripods and other photo equipment). One can just unscrew it. This leaves us with the two balls and the clamp. Using an hex wrench I can remove the centra bolt holding the clamp together, and we are now down to base components.
Were this mount not available as a single unit, once could build a functional equivalent. I’ve got another suction cup base that supports attaching items to the top of the suction base or to the side. I’ve found the side is more useful when I am mounting to side. The 1-inch (22mm) balls can be purchased individually as can the clamps. Add a tripod phone mount, and we have an equivalent component.
Achieving equivalent assemblies is only a starting point. Custom needs can also be included in an assembly design.
One could add more points of articulation be chaining more links of butterfly clamps and balls together.Someone can add more components for more flexibility, stability, or other functionality. Instead of a suction cup mount, I could use a magnet mount to attach to something metallic or a clamp mount to attach to a bar.
I also have a tube component for adding buoyancy to a rig. Someone might want to do this to avoid losing equipment (so that it floats if it falls into water) or may want to adjust buoyance to make something easier to handle underwater.
If you are interested in any of this hardware, I’ll post links to much of it below.
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