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CP Wedge Clamp


Neal Bryant

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There were two of these clamps made. I had them for a while. Custom run by C.P. I got them in autumn of 1996 to use with my MS Elite. The stages of the Master Series and Ultra 1 sleds vibrated, especially with longer camera setups. I used a standard ENG Broadcast camera coupled with the old Listec Shoebox prompter on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Quite a long kit. the two clamps ( spreaders, really ) made all of the difference.

 

Searching these forums will reveal threads about this issue. Considering the number of those sleds out there, a production run of these would be well worth it. ( adored that sled..... Great unit. ) The anodizing, as it turns out, is important in terms of little to no slippage once the clamps are in place.

 

Forget the cost- they have to be used two at a time for best stage tension and maintenance of a flat stage surface.

 

Charles: there can be a bit of play in those stages as well, but for different reasons. Check the set screws that maintain pressure on the underside of the side to side dovetail. Over time ( especially with a lot of Lowmode work ) some of those set screws can back out a tiny bit. This might cause vibration. A careful setting of all of me ( 5 or 6 across I believe ) will help with this. Also, check the four machine screws holding the stage to the end plug on the centerpost.

 

Best to all,

 

Peter Abraham, S.O.C.

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I've only dealt with a Master series rig so I don't know if this solution will work with all the other older Stages of different Rigs and I'm not even sure that it works half as good as the CP wedge talked about here in this post.

 

My simple solution was to make up Shims that sit under the section of the sliding shoe that the dovetail/camera mounting plate sits into.

As you know there is about 1.5 mm between the sliding shoe and the body of the stage, if you press down on the ends of this section you can see it flex. The shims that I made were cheap, I used strips of 35mm film, I was too lazy to go and buy special shim material but film is a very resiliant material and the "Black" side is fairly slippery, I cut the film to be about 1 1/2 inches long X 1/4 inch wide, I sandwitched 2 layers together with thin double sided tape to make the shims the desired thickness . I made up 4 pieces like this and I then stuck them down with thin double sided tape onto the main body of the stage under the 4 corners of the sliding section, making sure that I possitioned them to cover the full travel of the for/aft adjustment.

 

To fit them, start with the 2 back ones, adjust the for/aft all the way forward and slide the shim into place, I needed to flex the stage up just enough to slide the shim into the space. For the 2 front shims, adjust the for/aft all the way to the back and do the same. My "film" shims were a bit oversized but that made for a tight fit but the shoe still slid nicely across the film.

 

Again I don't know if this is half as good a solution to this problem as the CP Wedge, but this way I have full adjust-ability of the stage for/aft,

I presume that if you use the CP wedge and want to adjust for-aft with your clamp in place you need to take the pressure off the clamp - adjust for/aft- and re-clamp.

However using these clamps provides a much larger footprint and you can lock down the Stage and camera plate very positivly.

With all my 4 shims in place the end result is a pretty stable stage.

Vibrations from all the other components are still and issue.

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Geoff,

In fact I did not have to loosen the tiny knurled knobs on my set before adjusting fore/aft or side/side. This made for a great situation- since a tools-free stage was but one of many calling cards of the Master Series rigs. The black anodizing against black anodizing slid very nicely.

 

Best,

Peter

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Hi Peter,

I'm sure that the guys who are going to make up and use these Wdges will be happy to know this fact. I've never seen one of these "Wedges" so I wasn't sure exactly how they operated. I guess that having 2 of these wedges for/aft means that you don't have to clamp them down too hard, just enough to fill the space.

Scott, glad you have had some success with trying the shims. My solution on my rig was intended as just a test at the time and originally thought that if my celuloid shims sort of worked I was going to make up a more accurate and perminant shim that would work better, but as I was lucky with the size of the gap and the thickness of the film I lucked out as it seemed to work pretty well.

 

I'm just about to buy a new Ultra 2 so I won't be spending any more time on the testing now, However if I see a gap in the Ultra 2 stage I might just do the same thing to it just to make sure it's as solid as it can be too.

All the best

Geoff

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