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New gimbal on Zephyr


Mathéo Lemay

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Hi! I'm wondering if I should upgrade the gimbal on my Zephyr. It just broke, and I was wondering if it was a good idea to upgrade to a more robust one?
I often go heavier than the 23lbs recommended max payload (which is probably why the gimbal broke recently after more or less 5 years, I'm the second owner, so I'm not sure).
I was also thinking about maybe keeping the original gimbal but to change the screw that holds the gimbal yearly in order to prevent it to break.

What do you guys think ?

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I am VERY interested in learning about the same topic! I have the Aero30.

 

What happens when you go over 23lbs? Do you notice your rig acting differently? Also, how did the gimbal break? Was it a slow break over time, or a sudden failure? 

Would an upgraded gimbal increase the payload capacity? 

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Basically the screw holding the gimbal handle to the yoke just snapped. Fortunately I had one of my hand on the post and the rig was in low mode so only two connectors broke of the Odyssey 7Q I had rigged on top of the camera.

The rig is not acting differently when I overload it a bit, from what I noticed. 
And yeah that's a question I also have about increasing the payload capacity by changing the gimbal. Because I have a feeling that the arm of the Zephyr (which is the same as the Aero30, I think) is capable of holding more like 30lbs and that the weakness of the Zephyr (I don't know about the Aero, cause it's not the same gimbal!) resides more in its gimbal. But that's just my observation from the 2 short years I've been doing steadicam. I'd really appreciate if we could have some sort of feedback from a more experienced operator.
I wrote to Joe Wilbur at steadicam, still waiting on a reply. I'll share it here when I do get it if you want!

broken gimbal.jpg

Edited by Mathéo Lemay
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Thanks for sharing your experiences! Did you notice anything during the time up until it snapped, or was it out of the blue? This is a great fear of mine; a sudden failure while on set oping. 

I feel the same way about the arm. Every time I've flown a bigger build, 18-19lbs, I still have a lot of room left in the arm to go heavier. 

I'm not sure if any other gimbal fits the Zephyr or Aero sled, I think our post is one inch?

If you find yourself always pushing the limit, it might be time to upgrade the rig!

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On 3/19/2019 at 7:19 PM, Mathéo Lemay said:

Hi! I'm wondering if I should upgrade the gimbal on my Zephyr. It just broke, and I was wondering if it was a good idea to upgrade to a more robust one?
I often go heavier than the 23lbs recommended max payload 

answering your own question. 

 

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You should probably look into upgrading your rig, otherwise you'll probably end up paying more fixing it every time it breaks if you keep overloading like that. GPI offers financing on their equipment through some of their partners, which may be a smarter idea than paying for a new gimbal/service every time your rig breaks. Alternatively, wait for someone on here to post their rig up for sale and you should be able to get a pretty sweet deal.

Otherwise, I would replace the gimbal with a new Zephyr gimbal and strip your camera builds of all extraneous accessories. If you can't keep the camera under the payload range of the rig, then you should probably not be using a Zephyr.

Edited by Corey Hess
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