1/4 and 3/8 inch inserts and anchors

Butterflies wrote:

Hello there,

Frequently, I need to solve problems of attaching photographic equipment, such as tripods or camera's to self-made constructions. In the past, I have solved it in quite amateur ways. Now I need a more professional solution to

1 attach a tripod to hard plastic sheets of 10 mm thickness (HMPE en Acrylic)

2 attach hard plastic 10 mm sheet to a tripod

Where can I find existing hardware to do this?

Thanks for your recommendations,

Rob

If the plastic is strong enough simply cutting a 1/4-20 thread (UNC or witworth) into the plastic will do the job. Using a 1/4-20 to 3/8-16 adapter would spread the load a bit & make it slightly stronger. These adapters are available via e-bay/amazon or most good photographic stores, (for the taps to cut threads substitute hardware store for photographic store...)

If it needs to support any weight I'd be inclined to mount an aluminium block via through bolts & cut the thread in that. I think there are a number of cheap Aria-swiss compatible quick release plates that already have such threads cut that might do the job.

A photo of the setup would make it much easier to give a recommendation. I've fabricated a lot of stuff, but seeing the actual environment would help.

did you come up with a solution?

i too think a bit more information on what you are trying to do would help.   are you trying to make these permanent modifications to your plastic?

what came to my mind is vacuum suction cups.   just do a quick search online.   some are small and can hold a lot of weight.   glass workers use these.

Butterflies wrote:

Hello there,

Frequently, I need to solve problems of attaching photographic equipment, such as tripods or camera's to self-made constructions. In the past, I have solved it in quite amateur ways. Now I need a more professional solution to

1 attach a tripod to hard plastic sheets of 10 mm thickness (HMPE en Acrylic)

2 attach hard plastic 10 mm sheet to a tripod

Where can I find existing hardware to do this?

Thanks for your recommendations,

Rob

my versatile wood-pod may solve similar problems. Its a wood "n" structure with a hole to accept a standard  3/8 or 1/4 photo-gear screw to mount a tripod head or a clamp depending on purpose. The picture below shows the wood-pod with a gear head mounted etc. The wood-pod serves here a slider on a wood railing.

The inverse problem is solved using a DIY dovetail  to fit an arca-swiss clamp. The picture below shows to the bottom left a card-board with hole glued to an aluminum dovetail. This is used to slide in the Arca clamp of  a nodal slide, which is screwed to the dummy camera base.