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Gimbal Design


Jens Piotrowski SOC

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Feature wise the Pro gimbal has the whole drop time adjustment thing. Personally seems completely unnecessary. Does anyone find it useful? Also of course the XCS works with 2", 1.58" and 1.5" posts while Pro and tiffen are only single size.

 

As far as centering goes it seems to be just different design concepts. One camp will argue that if you machine a gimbal to high enough precision there should be no need for adjustment. The other will say that as things wear and get knocked around you may need the ability to recenter it. Making it to a lower precision with a mechanism of manually centering it is probably a cheaper proposition. Personally I prefer the non centerable approach.

 

~Jess

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Can somebody explain the different gimbal designs, PRO vs XCS vs Tiffen or MK-V.

 

How come you have to manually center the Tiffen gimbal and not others?

 

shim vs no shims...

 

 

Thanks,

 

Jens

 

 

It comes down to Precision machine work done to aerospace or higher tolerances (Pro and XCS) or the tiffen approach which is build in adjustability and machine to much looser tolerances

 

Done correctly you don't need adjustability

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Can somebody explain the different gimbal designs, PRO vs XCS vs Tiffen or MK-V.

 

How come you have to manually center the Tiffen gimbal and not others?

 

shim vs no shims...

 

 

Thanks,

 

Jens

 

 

It comes down to Precision machine work done to aerospace or higher tolerances (Pro and XCS) or the tiffen approach which is build in adjustability and machine to much looser tolerances

 

Done correctly you don't need adjustability

 

 

thanks Eric,

 

that's what I thought....

 

 

Jens

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All-

 

Tiffen machines and inspects their parts to specifications that Tiffen does not share outside of the company.

 

Regardless, tolerances between multiple parts may add up, so that, for instance, a +/- .001 inch tolerance in two parts may create a .002 mismatch in the worse case. (to be clear, .001 is not the spec we are talking about, just an example).

 

The claim is that adjustability in yoke centering is to account for the “loose tolerances” in manufacturing the part.

 

This is in fact not true, and I know because I happened to design that particular feature into the gimbal.

 

The screw threads are there to make it easy to assemble the yoke and bearings. Machining tolerances were not changed, and they were, and are, are very, very fine.

 

The ADDED benefit of the design is the adjustability, which can account for tolerance mismatches, and get the centering of the yoke parts down to any precision desired by the operator, regardless of how the tolerances of individual parts might add up. There is no need for shims, and the design speeds up the assembly and inspection process, which translates to lower cost. That the operator can also adjust the gimbal in the field is just another benefit.

 

I am ignorant of how XCS and PRO manufacture their fine gimbals, nor do I own or have I owned one. Therefore I have no solid information to share about them.

 

Jerry

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I've owned both the old PRO and the new PRO and I've used (on shoots) the Tiffen and played around with the XCS (but never on a shoot). I love my PRO 2 but quite frequently I wish I had my old PRO 1 as it was smaller and simpler and just as smooth. I do however like the ergo handle on the XCS and will probably pick one up when I have an extra few grand laying around... It's a nice feature to not need a 'J' bracket when in low mode.

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