Film slate hinge quick clip

Made for a film slate AKA clapperboard. Allows you to easily and securely attach your slate to your belt etc.
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updated September 15, 2025

Description

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Motivation

Hey camera assistant! Ever had a situation with your slate, that you have to get your hands free but you have your slate. So do you either set it down and risk it getting damaged? (Also then you don't have it with you) Or do you slide the top clapper through your belt loop, where it can drop easily? For me both were happening constantly so I decided to do something about it. Filmsticks have their Aye Max-Hinge and Holstery MagMaster system, but it's really expensive at around 100€$ and it's magnets which doesn't sound safe, so not for me.

Description

With this you can replace your slate hinge (back side), and put the female clip on your belt, or a pouch with molle loops, or through another adapter to a super clamp or robocup.

Remixed from “Binocular quick clip” by PalmyreSG1. The dovetail attachment is exactly the same as his, so the couple more models from his design are compatible if you need them, though the ones here are the relevant ones.

The male dovetail has slots on each side, so it moves in and out of the female dovetail only in one orientation, or it's opposite. This allows you to quickly drop the slate in to the belt clip, then gravity rotates it about 45 to 90 degrees, and then it can't be pulled up. That way it doesn't bump off your belt if you hit something. You have to rotate the slate back to a horizontal orientation in order to pull it out. The line in the circle shows the orientation where it moves. You can fill that up with another filament, or just mark it with a permanent marker.

Doesn't interfere with using the slate too much since you can cup your hand over the dovetail.

PRINT INSTRUCTIONS

  • Select your preferred pieces. Customize the hinge for your own if neither of the finished ones are compatible.
  • BUILD PLATE: Check recommended print orientations from the photo. Also Print sequence - by object is possible for 2 parts even on A1 mini's small build plate.
  • QUALITY: Layer height 0.20
  • MATERIAL: Use PETG or stronger preferably. PLA might be strong enough but I wouldn't trust it myself.
  • WALLS: preferably 4-5
  • INFILL: 30-40% Gyroid, honeycomb or cubic
Part specific instructions:
  • (HINGES ONLY) use 5-6 bottom shell layers to make sure the flat hinge part is solid.
  • (BELT AND MOLLE CLIP ONLY) they are recommended to be printed on their side for strength (see above photo). For those, enable supports. None of the others need supports though.

ASSEMBLY

Not much to it, just replace the back hinge with the printed hinge. PETG is quite strong already, but if you worry about it, you can always get longer screws and put this hinge on top of the metal one. These are a bit thicker than Filmsticks hinges, to the original screws are just barely long enough, but probably not long enough if you have both hinges in there. If the screw isn't long enough to catch the threadlock in the nuts, just turn the nuts around and screw them in from the “wrong” side.

Tags



Model origin

The author remixed this model.

Differences of the remix compared to the original

Attachment mechanism was copied from “Binocular quick clip” by PalmyreSG1 on Thingiverse.

Also one of the female pieces uses Cedricheckly's dovetail attachments, so you can use that to adapt it to robocups, super clamps etc. (Check my profile and his)

Everything else is my design. 

License