Build Your Own Pocket Turntable for Photography

Hello readers, In this instructable I will show you how I made this turntable or you can call it as rotating table.

This portable device helps you to capture stunning videos of objects, wondering how?

The answer to your question lies below in the video given at the end of this instructable.

Well! let me tell you why you should try to build this project.

No matter you are a hobbyist or a photographer you need to shoot videos in or the other kind.

Say that you are a jewelry photographer and you want to shoot videos of some earrings instead of taking that old-fashioned still videos you can place that object on this turntable;e and record a video of the object in the 360-degree.

This device also has the option to control the speed of rotation, These features make this device suitable for most of the turntable videography needs.

The best part of this object is it is portable and powered by a long-lasting battery so that you can carry on with your work and worry less on the maintenance of this device.

How does this turntable work?

I have modified a plastic geared micro servo for continuous rotation, usually, the shaft of the stock servo rotates by 180degree but after the modification, it rotates 360 degrees.

Now you may wonder why micro servos, this is because they are very cheap and provide a good torque consuming less power.

To control the speed of rotation I will be using a potentiometer you can also use any PWM speed-controlling device, but I wanted to keep it simple so I thought of using a potentiometer.

Now let's head over to building this project

The supplies needed to build this are very simple and if you are a hobbyist you might already have all of these, if you don't have you can get them easily at a local electronics shop.

2 CDs used or new does not matter

Micro servo(plastic geared)

Philips screw driver

Potentiometer

3D printer

Hot glue

18650 battery with holder

Few pieces of cardboard

Time!

Like I said earlier I will be modifying a 180-degree rotation servo to a 360-degree servo, This can be done in a very simple way.

Hold on to the reading, I will make you understand here, if you still have any doubts you can check for the visuals or the video.

Start by loosening the screws given at the base of the micro servo.

If you have a Philips/star-shaped screwdriver almost your work is done.

Remove the screws, there will be only 2 screws, after you remove the screws remove the top lid of the servo.

In the top lid, you can see the set of gears, here we are working on only one gear that is on the top,

Remove that gear and at the base of the gear you can find a small hump, remove the small hump and reinstall the gears.

After you have modified the gears we can head over to modifying the motor.

As you are done with the top part now remove the base lid of the servo, there will be 3 wires running here.

trim that wire from the chip, I have cut the circuit an this is an optional part, You can directly solder the wires to the motor terminals.

Remove any one wire so that we have only 2 wires now, one for positive supply and one for negative.

End of this step close back the lids and add screws, now add a servo horn if you have just to check if the 360 rotation has been enabled,

Provide power supply from battery to the motor, now that motor should be able to make 360-degree rotation.

To make a proper fixture between the motor and the rotating disc I designed a simple circle taking account of the CD dimensions.

I have provided the setting that I used here for the parts, you can use PLA to print the parts.

The knob of the potentiometer went missing so I had to design a new one and print it, if you already have a knob you can skip this part of the 3d print.

It took me only 20mins to print the part, if you want the stl for printing i have given them below.

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We need a secure holder that can hold the servo intact.

You can just cut the square pieces of cardboard as I did, you can follow exact same dimensions.

To make the servo holder I made a hole in the center to which we will glue the servo in further steps.

For the sides also there are measurements and you can see those in this step visuals.

Cut these pieces and later we can glue them together

This is the important part because here we are dealing with the rotation, if the alignment is not good there will be a disturbance in the rotation.

So be a little careful in this part, I will start by adding the 3d printed part to the center of the cd

Use drop of superglue to fix it to the center.

I found the screw for this from the servo horns of the motor.

use the start screwdriver to fix these to the horns of the servo.

Now like I said earlier add the servo to the square base.

Now test if the table spins properly, it will! if you followed the above steps.

I found that using CD for the base would make this project look a lot cleaner.

But merely using the CD would not look good so I added the pieces of cardboard that would form a square.

The combination of all these will provide better stability for this turntable as we are adding the battery to the base which in turn adds weight.

Use the simple steps to add the squared sides.

Follow this simple circuit for this project, the potentiometer has 3 terminals and the middle one is common.

Connect one end of the motor to one end of the batter, the other side of the terminal one from the battery, and one from the motor will be connected to the center and one on either end of the potentiometer.

Now after you make a simple square using the pieces of cardboard and gluing them together attach the potentiometer to the side and later add the knob.

Place the battery and insulate the wire connections.

Finally, add glue to the top part and glue the top part.

Wait some time for the glue to dry completely.

Now you can start to record the objects in 360, if you have any questions regarding this project comments box is always there to connect us together.

Secure all the gaps with hot glue and leave one side free to remove the battery and recharge.

How to use this turntable?

It is very simple, Place the color of the background, in my case, it was white(on a4 sheet), and place the object over it.

Gently turn the potentiometer until the desired speed of rotation meets your needs.

You can start to record a video, After the video is recorded, turn off the device by slowing down the potentiometer to zero and then removing the battery.

You can charge the battery and put it back again and use this.

But as per my test a full charge, you can complete multiple video shoots.

You should not miss watching this video, I have kept some of the objects and did a video, and the results came out really well. If your browser has some issues playing the video, you can copy and paste the link and watch the video

https://youtu.be/UZ7HgZk1ces

Hope you will try to build this project, Have a great day, and thank you for reading till here.