Recommendation for a light, low geared, macro slider?

3D Gunner wrote:

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

3D Gunner wrote:

I have built a large and heavy device that contains three fast focusing rails, two for front and back advance and one for side shift, plus another fine lead screw system.

Sounds fascinating. Would you care to share what you built it for, and perhaps share pics of the rig and the results?

Details, please.

Pictured is the setup for using microscope objectives.

That is interesting. I don't think I've seen so many native system tubes stacked before. I stack a lot of M42 tubes, but those things are 1.0mm thread and sturdy like gas pipes, and I have adapters to M42 for all my objectives (RMS, M25, M26, M27) the 50mm Photar (M40) and enlarger lenses (M39 forward and M40.5x0.5 reversed).

What is the rotator under the camera? Is there a swivel section in the tube near the camera that we can't see from this angle?

For combinations with large extension, the mount is slightly different.
I also use several kinds of tripods and tripod heads, plus a motorized attachment.

Doesn't everyone?

And I'm also designing a much lighter version with linear ball bearings.
For all macro shots I use this toy, or parts of it, plus/minus other accessories.

It's great fun out in the field, where you can lose an entire day for 1-2-3 or a few photos, where someone else is frying several varieties of meat, paired with cold beers.

Absolutely. The journey is sometimes more important than the destination.

The combination with this type of tripod head is very high; for a more stable balance and elimination of vibrations, a different, lower height tripod head is recommended!

Or a heavy gear head with thick castings. The old Manfrotto 405 kills vibrations, but the thing weighs, if memory serves, 2kg all by itself.

But for more control, I'm playing with a yoke design right now. Lowers the COG and reduces bounce from the lateral arm. The problem is that it means doubling at least the elevator lead screw rails (and syncing them with stepper motors) and either doubling the rear standard pitch geared rotators or having a geared rotator on one side and a plain swivel on the other.

This is an ancient version of the rear standard, with a Haoge 160mm rail for lateral, a NiSi 180mm rail on elevation, and a double L arrangement that bounces far too much to actually use for anything, even when it's all being run by steppers, hence the move to double elevators and a yoke or possibly square internal frame.

The front standard is less complicated, and when it's all together there's 7 steppers total running the thing.

The more complex the serial robot, the less stable. At the rate I'm going, I'll have gone to a parallel robot before I manage to get the serial version running properly. The Stewart drive version is 6 DoF, but much simpler, smaller, and stronger.