WorkMotion Control
Eight axes built to make the camera repeat the impossible.
A camera move you can build.
Motion-Control Rig V3 is an eight-axis camera system built from wood, aluminium, pillow-block bearings and a second-hand slewing ring. It was designed and built together with my father for repeatable multi-pass miniature photography.
A Raspberry Pi 5 solves the camera-path kinematics. An ESP32 with TMC2209 drivers translates those paths into stepper movement across base pan, tilt, a radial slide, secondary pan and tilt, roll, a travelling counterweight and a dolly.
The machine is operational and still evolving. Its job is not to look futuristic; its job is to put a real camera through the same move again when light, miniature or performance changes.
The machine, as built.
- System
- 8 coordinated axes
- Reach
- 1.2 m radial arm / 1 m dolly
- Motion
- ESP32 / TMC2209
- Kinematics
- Raspberry Pi 5 / damped least squares
- Camera
- Fujifilm X-S20
- Build
- Wood / aluminium / workshop parts
Eight ways to move one lens.
No measured repeatability claim is published yet. The system is built for matched multi-pass paths; the next job is to quantify how closely it returns.
- Base pan
- Tilt
- Radial
- Pan 2
- Tilt 2
- Roll
- Counterweight
- Dolly
