3D Printing Lens Hoods

OK. Where to get 35.5mm lens hood for $1? I would be glad to buy it.

Gigants live among us...

linuxmaster wrote:

OK. Where to get 35.5mm lens hood for $1? I would be glad to buy it.

35.5mm diameter?? Or to fit a 35.5mm lens?

I have "antique" Soviet Industar 50-2 f/3.5 lense and it has 35.5 mm diameter in the filter part. That is why I want to put lens hood with 35.5 mm diameter. I found nothing like that at aliexpress or somewhere else. So it goes.

My first lens hood is for LWD Mitutoyo with 32.2 mm objective diameter:

https://12in.cz/pismo/id/18_Clonka-pro-objektivy-Mitutoyo

I prepared it with XT-CF20 filament.

Captain Hook wrote:

A few years ago, I've tried 3D printing such parts. But it was always disappointing.

A lens hood generally requires more precision than you can get from a "filament extrusion" printer.

But resin printers have steadily come down in price, and their output is certainly up to the task.

Resin printers (also called "SLA" printers) require more expensive materials and more labour. You have to wash and cure the print. So they may not end up as such a bargain.

That said, I think it would be cool if there was a "library" of lens hood models, but who is going to make them? You have to do a number of precision measurements and enter them correctly into a CAD/CAM program, paying special attention to voids and supports and such.

In my experience, modelling is much more work than printing. That's a big time investment for just one or two lens hoods.

slickwillie wrote:

I could probably get an inexpensive 3D printer and try 50 variations for the cost of buying a new hood for a 400 f/2.8...

It is unlikely that an "inexpensive" 3D printer will be up to the job, especially since you mention a screw and thread.

You'd need an SLA printer, and they start at about $400 or so.

SLA snobs consider filament printers, "toys."

Jan Steinman wrote:

Captain Hook wrote:

A few years ago, I've tried 3D printing such parts. But it was always disappointing.

A lens hood generally requires more precision than you can get from a "filament extrusion" printer.

But resin printers have steadily come down in price, and their output is certainly up to the task.

Resin printers (also called "SLA" printers) require more expensive materials and more labour. You have to wash and cure the print. So they may not end up as such a bargain.

That said, I think it would be cool if there was a "library" of lens hood models, but who is going to make them? You have to do a number of precision measurements and enter them correctly into a CAD/CAM program, paying special attention to voids and supports and such.

In my experience, modelling is much more work than printing. That's a big time investment for just one or two lens hoods.

Actually, on Thingiverse I have scripts posted that can make all sorts of custom lenscaps and filter-thread-mounted stuff. Not yet posted, I have a version to make compact custom hoods -- basically, a flat mask design, with a second thing to print a measuring device so you can correctly size the mask-style hoods. I'm currently at the IS&T Electronic Imaging conference, so it'll be a while after I get home before I have a chance to post the hood mask stuff... which I keep forgetting to post.

Anyway, it's very similar to the Front-Mounted Waterhouse Stop Thing I have posted...

The only things that are hard to print about a hood are the filter thread and really thin walls with good durability. The thread is actually not a big deal, with a neat little trick to make it trivial. The thin-wall stuff is typically done in vase mode, and it is fragile, but there is even a trick for that, where you can force vase mode to make multi-layer walls by making the wall design a bit maze-like, so the slicer sees it as all outside walls. I don't use the second trick for my hoods, because they are the flat mask style.

BTW, most plastics for extrusion and resins are NOT opaque, especially in the NIR. Thus, you might need to coat the hood with Black 2.0 or somesuch.

As for resin printers being more precise, well, not really. They tend towards smoother surface finish and less long-range geometric distortion, but I've seen no evidence of them producing more precise parts, and they actually have worse problems with support structures and less than 100% infill structures... as well as using expensive, toxic, resin instead of nice friendly PLA.