Time Lapse Dolly Mechanism Build

[duffman1278]

I'm making a time lapse dolly for a personal project.

It's taken me some time to get all the parts for this fabricated and put together but it's almost done.

The motor is a 2RPM motor, which I understand is extremely slow but that's because I'll be shooting still images as a pose to speeding up a video recording. The motor will pull the dolly's using fishing wire. (I need to cut holes in the angle iron for this still)

I can't figure out what I want to mount it too though. I want to connect the 2 dolly's but I don't want to weld a plate in between them because I want a little bit of flexibility because I doubt the tubes will be exactly parallel.

Any ideas are welcomed.

 

[NASTYZEN]

Cool project.
Maybe try to connect them with two tubes that slide one over the other.
A bit like a hydraulic cylinder?

 

[racingtadpole]

An angle iron. Gives you a flat surface for what ever pivot you choose.

 

[Rusty Musket]

Maybe you should flip the wheel carriages so the triangular plates ride on outside of each rod. That would give you the ability to connect the two rods together center to center like rungs of a ladder. You could use round stock, bar stock, or angle. As long as the "rungs" have some spacing between them, you can retain some flexibility in the rig and allow it to flex and twist as needed without losing the consistent spacing between the 2 rods. You may also want to consider skateboard wheels instead of steel as they are much lighter, smoother, and handle variations in the rig better. Good luck

 

[Big-Foot]

This will be interesting!!

 

[duffman1278]

Finally got around to finishing it. Although I need to paint it still and develop the controller to let the camera and dolly move accordingly. Here are some video samples.