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for my project of wireless motorized gimbal head for DSLR, I am seeking for gimbal head-like vertically sliding clamp with quick release (ideally arca-swiss). The rail which it slides on is not a problem, there are plenty of them on a market. For better illustration, please see attached image.

gimbal head vertically sliding clamp

Is it possible to buy something like this standalone for reasonable price? What is the correct name for such clamp? I am searching for it for half a day and I only found several extremely expensive spare parts.

The only option I see now is buying cheap (+- 50 €) gimbal head and just take it from there. But if you know some better/cheaper option, please let me know here. Thank you :)

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3 Answers 3

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Seriously, talk to a local machinist. If they have a 45-degree dovetail end mill in their stock of tooling (not all shops will), that's something that can be knocked out in no time with no special fixturing (jigs and clamps and such), especially if it uses the same clamping system as your example (just a slot and set screw at the rail). It doesn't even need to be sophisticated/expensive flood-cooled CNC machining; this is something that can be done by a low-volume job shop or repairman on an inexpensive (or ancient) manual milling machine.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for your suggestion. I have found really cheap gimbal head from which I can take this part. It will be definitely cheaper than investing time and money for material and work into custom-made part. Moreover, It might be possible to use whole gimbal head and modify it to my purposes, so I will definitely visit local machinist, but it will be much more simple task. \$\endgroup\$
    – Oki
    Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 13:00
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Amateur astronomers use “L-brackets” to do what you want, but typically they will not use Arca-Swiss dovetails. More likely to have Vixen dovetails. Like this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/alt-azimuth/skywatcher-l-bracket-dovetail.html

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for suggestion, but I do not see this as an option. I need the exact functionality as mentioned above, as I plan to build own motorized gimbal head for DSLR. Maybe I will update my question. Anyway, I have already searched for "L-bracket" but still not found anything useful. \$\endgroup\$
    – Oki
    Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 9:06
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I have found "Bk-45 gimbal head" for less than 35 €, so I decided to buy it and modify it for my purposes. I was not successful in finding stand-alone sliding L-clamp cheaper than this, and I doubt that custom-made part would cost less.

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