DIY: Slider (With Bearings) For Under $100
Nov 5, 2014
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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Time and again we show our love for sliders as creative tools. They provide some sweet production value at little cost and effort. Now most DIY sliders that we feature here are either friction based (with the build trying to minimise friction) or aligned-skating-wheels based. It is kinda rare to see a build with the smoothness of bearings. And this one by Jones Oliver is under $100.
With more and more people turning into makering, more maker-dedicated shops are popping around and Jones mostly used the parts from one of those stores for his build:
After stumbling onto OpenBuilds.com, I realized that building a solid slider at a reasonable price was probably within reach. It took some time to get familiar with their parts and pieces – and after looking through a couple of other slider projects – I was able to start cobbling together the following list… [cont. on Joses’s site]
Here are the cart materials aligned:
and how the cart looks put together:
This video explains how to connect the bearings wheels into the slider
What I loved about this build is that it actually looks good enough to use around clients. Head over to camera47 for the full build instructions.
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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16 responses to “DIY: Slider (With Bearings) For Under $100”
Well, for almost 100$, i can buy a new one…
Link? I’m looking for a ballbearing slider for ~100$
dx.com, ebay, aliexpress. lots of them, like http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Camera-Video-Track-Slider-Video-Stabilizer-System-with-Ball-Bearing-for-DSLR-Camcorders-120cm-48/1999248533.html are even cheaper ones
Total price > 150$, and ball bearings are questionable on a review I saw of that one…
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BOGOT4M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2W5SJG85HOZQ6&coliid=I1VYO5W7N3PC47
That’s getting closer to what I need, but all of the reviews say anything bigger than a point & shoot will not work with this slider… (too much front/back wobble because track is too narrow)
Or just buy this.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BOGOT4M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2W5SJG85HOZQ6&coliid=I1VYO5W7N3PC47
Ratrig sell complete ball bearing sliders from about €30. Me and Chung dha both ordered some and we’ll both post reviews on our channels about it.
BTW someone mentioned ratrig sliders might be made from these openbuild parts.
Hi Nistan – thanks for telling us about Rat Rig – I hadn’t heard of them before. After looking at their website, yes, it looks like they also use OpenBuilds hardware. And I like the way they built the legs to stay within the OpenBuilds catalog. Good stuff.
Oops – Nitsan (sorry about that)
Jones, can you post some quick videos for us? I’m waiting to pull the trigger on one of these sliders. :-)
Go over to openbuilds.com There are a number of examples to work from as well as videos on how to use the components. The RatRig design is fairly simple and you should be able to knock out a copy just by looking at what’s there. If you get stuck, all you have to do is ask on the openbuilds forum and somebody will be glad to offer suggestions.
If you really want to go all out, consider this one http://www.openbuilds.com/builds/time-lapse-camera-rail.1307/
I can build it just fine. I want to see it sliding a DSLR before I purchase the bits…
Thanks for sharing, Rick -that’s a clever build. For those looking for another slider example for DSLR – check out http://www.openbuilds.com/builds/dslr-video-slider.535/.
You can get openbuilds parts from http://www.Makerparts.ca cheaper shipping then going to the USA