Surf Camera Housing

The Brief

A Local Surfing photographer had a very interesting request to add to his portfolio of equipment.

But without the technology of 3D scanning, professional CAD design and Industrial 3D printing would have been impossible.

Salty surf housing

Salty surf housing manufacture underwater hand held camera cases. The cases enable the end user to safely place their expensive SLR cameras in a rugged machined aluminium waterproof case, keeping their prize possession clean, dry, and safe, at the same time being ergonomically easy to hold and use to take those all-important underwater snaps. The task in hand was to use a proven ergonomic handle that is already available in the market place, then redesign the grip to be used in conjunction with the unique camera housing. The handle of choice was a replica rubber handle from and AK-47:

3D Scanning products

First task

First task was to 3D scan the handle with the Einscan 2X plus with the industrial pack, as the 3D Scan is accurate to 50 microns, every dimple on the handle was captured which would create a problem further down the line when eventually the handle would be CNC machined from Aluminium:

The Solution:

Use Geomagics essentials which comes with the Einsncan 2X RED deal (Reverse Engineering Design) available at Cammpro.

With Geomgics there is a function called “Sandpaper” Which simply is sanding the 3D file, so a bumpy grip turns into a totally smooth finish:

Virtually smooth the part

To see the time lapse video of how the handle was smoothed check this YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suYdTzTC3aE

Now with that the grip is smooth, geomagics has the capability to export to a useable CAD file, the STEP file generated was exported into Autodesk Inventor, then modified as per the customers instructions:

Now time to get the handle machined from Aluminium:

The parts were machined from a billet of Aluminium with features designed by Cammpro to reduce weight.

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