School Design Project: Scope Buddy
The "Scope Buddy" was a group design project for an Intro to Manufacturing class at UC Berkeley. I was responsible for the CAD modeling and renderings. The assignment was to design a device that extends the functions of a cell phone beyond it's own capabilities. Our group came up with the "scope buddy": a clamp that aligns a cellphone's camera concentric with the lens of a device such as a microscope or telescope.
The device consists of two distinct parts: the phone clamp, and the scope clamp. These clamps are held together with magnets and a metal plate to allow for flexible adjustability of the camera placement relative to the scope lens.
This photo shows just the phone clamp portion. The clamp is made up of laser-cut steel components, padded with foam. The laser cut design allowed us to incorporate a ratcheting mechanism within the clamp that is easy to adjust and allows for a large range of phone sizes to be used.
This photo shows the scope clamp portion. The two largest components were intended to be 3D printed. Adjustments are made with a threaded rod, nut, and knob to accommodate varying scope sizes. This mechanism is held in place with a brass bushing and a collar.
Here is an exploded view of the full assembly. Two magnets are glued inside the scope clamp body and attract the laser-cut steel components of the phone clamp, securing the two halves together while allowing for near fully flexible adjustment within a fixed plane.
