Submitted by Panascape on Wed, 11/24/2010 - 07:46
Posted in
All,
A friend who used to work as a motion control camera assistant in Los Angeles mentioned the idea of using Velcro instead of a belt drive for linear dolly motion. He suggested putting a strip of female Velcro on the rail system and male Velcro around a drive wheel. He explained that there is enough contact strength between the two surfaces to allow for precise resolution.
I am thinking about trying this out and wondering if anyone has any experience with this, "out of the box" idea. I like that it eliminates the step of setting up a belt and tensioning it each time you want to build your rig.
Thanks for your thoughts.
David
Sounds interesting! Is it
Sounds interesting!
Is it that tough or time consuming to set a belt though? It takes like 1-2 minutes at the most when I set up the Stage Zero system...
Velcro gets dirty after a
Velcro gets dirty after a while and looses it's initial contact strength. I've experienced that a million times while working in a camera rental. Also, depending on how you glue it, it might come of when getting hot.
If you want to do it like the pros, use a toothed rack and sprocket, that'll give you maximum precision, but also at maximum price...
I found that for dolly movement under 5 m, belts are reasonably precise. Move mismatch on my system only occurs when the motors loose steps (for example, because of too much acceleration), not because of the belt. This might be different on larger systems, I fear....
Matt