This project was made for ME102b the final project course at UC Berkeley for Mechanical Engineers. The goal of this project was to build a custom stabilizer to hold a camera. To achieve this 4 servo motors were used: one for yaw and roll, two for pitch. The entire project was made with 3D printing and custom carbon fiber panels that were CNC machined on a Shapeoko 3.
Many gimbals are very cumbersome and hard to stow. The concept of this design was to have an easily fold-able gimbal that could be slipped into a backpack. This would allow for easy storage for other camera equipment when weight and size becomes an issue for a photographer.
One of the biggest challenges for making the project work was cramming all the electronics into a small package to fit in the bottom of the gimbal. The two 9 DOF sensors were used to prevent drift on the gyro and stabilized the gimbal effectively. The width of the entire project is only 34mm with 2mm carbon fiber panels on either side leaving only 30mm for the width for the electronics.
The carbon fiber were CNCed on a Shapeoko 3.
Here the mounting for the electronics inside the 2 carbon fiber panels can be seen. Note how the sensors are located in the middle bottom of the handle.
The gimbal fits very easily in a laptop bag and can also be put into a backpack.