16mm Camera Battery Pack Designs with Replaceable Cells

[Kamran Pakseresht]

I wanted to share some designs I made for 3d printing your own 16mm camera battery packs that use replaceable cells. My motivation was that I kept acquiring these old 16mm cameras with dead battery packs and I wanted to create a pack that would basically never become trash because you can always replace the cells.

There are two packs:

• a pack for the Arri 16s which uses 8x nimh rechargeable double-a batteries (around 9.6v)
• a universal pack which is a bit more complicated and uses 4x protected 18650 button top lithium ion cells - it uses a voltage regulator so you can tune the voltage to whatever range your camera needs.

Because these packs use replaceable cells, they do not charge anything - they are solely for powering your camera - you take the cells out and charge them properly using a balanced charger.

The repository for the packs is here. In the repository you can find part lists and some additional information.

If you just want to download the 3d files for printing - you can find them here.

I've recorded a video tutorial that explains how to build the Arri 16s pack here. The Universal pack is a very similar build process but requires a few more components (on/off switch, voltage regulator and voltage readout)
 

If you don't want do go through the trouble of building one of these but you still want one - you can buy them from pluriboom.com (does not include batteries or charger) and I'll make it for you and send it to your door.

I am just learning design with onshape so this has been a fun project - but I am very new to this - if you have any recommendations or changes you think might be nice to add - I'm happy to update the designs. All of my onshape work is totally public so you can also just view the designs here. If you do make any changes I would love to incorporate them back into the repository so others can benefit.

If you would like to try making one of these yourself - let me know and I can help with some tips  - having others go through the build will probably help me work out some of the kinks in my documentation and make it easier for others in the future.

[Gareth Blackstock]

Hello,

These are very cool, nicely designed too.  I have been lugging around a heavy 12v motorcycle battery in a camera case for when I need a power source.  Have you considered putting a couple on one of the popular auction sites? Not necessarily to sell, but to let the google bots find the listings and make it very easy for a film maker/tinkerer to source your battery packs?

I like the voltage regulator idea, it does away with making a d.i.y supply for each camera one owns that have different voltages.

Gareth

[Kamran Pakseresht]

Thank you for the advice, I hadn’t thought about that - I will definitely put these up on Ebay today, that is a really great idea.

And yes the voltage regulator is really nice for that and it’s pretty easy to adjust with the readout on the side. 

I considered making a knob so you would not have to remove the cover to adjust it - but figured that might over-complicate the design a bit.

As it is now, you take the top off and use a small screw driver to make the adjustment on a trim-pot that lives on the voltage regulator- but you can see the readout as you adjust so it’s very easy to dial in an exact voltage.

 

Edited January 31 by Kamran Pakseresht