where are reasonable curved dolly tracks? « Videomaker Community Forums

ThomasTyndan
Member

I have searched high and low and I cannot find a single place that sell or has plans for a curved dolly track without making it prohibitavly expensive. I cannot fathom why it would be so hard to make a track for cheap or make some good plan. Does anyone know of any place that sells plans or the tracks themselves without being crazy expensive?

If not I'm just going to et a fella I know to bend some steel pipeing for me and be done with it.

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

Hi! I made my own dolly and track! I used PVC and skateboard wheels. I will try to get some basic plans drawn up to show you how I did it!

Posted 5 years ago #
ThomasTyndan
Member

Wow that would be great! I have some plans on the way for a dolly that is built like most skateboard dollys out there, using plywood and whatnot, but it uses an analog to axels thjat allows it to move on curved tracks, if you have good designs for a curved track also I would really appreciate it.

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

OK, these are very crude drawings but they get the idea across. The track is made of PVC for its lightweightedness. First I built the wheel assemblies and dolly itself. The wheel assemblies were actually very easy to make. I used a block of wood for each, cut a corner to have room for the hardware (bolts) and cut the opposite corner at a flat angle to be on the top.

Side view:

The dolly is basically three boards with holes drilled for a tripod to fit right in.

Top view:

I attached the wheel assemblies to the corners making sure the wheels are all facing the same direction with 2 wheel assemblies for one rail of the track and 1 for the other. Once the dolly was done, I simply used PVC in 5' sections (so I could just cut a 10' section fr each finished section I wanted) and added ties to them. I made 5' sections for portability and so I can add more as I want. Make sure your measurements are accurate so the track rails align with the wheel assemblies to avoid drag.

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

ThomasTyndan Wrote:
Wow that would be great! I have some plans on the way for a dolly that is built like most skateboard dollys out there, using plywood and whatnot, but it uses an analog to axels thjat allows it to move on curved tracks, if you have good designs for a curved track also I would really appreciate it.

This should work for a curved track also. I have not made any curved tracks yet but because one side only has 1 wheel assembly, I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

Posted 5 years ago #
ThomasTyndan
Member

Cool I'm actually making a platform dolly to hold a camera operator, but the track design looks good. Kinda what I was thinking about, railroad tracks of a kind. How did you attach PVC to the 1x4s did you use screws?

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

Actually, I was thinking about it and on a tight bend, my design might not work because when the two wheel side bends around the track, the distance between them and the other side would be more (or less). Maybe the solution would be to use a T shape instead of the triangle and have some kind of mechanism that allows the t bar to extend and contract smoothly. Sounds easy enough right? This would also allow the track rails to vary in width slightly without any drag whatsoever.

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

ThomasTyndan Wrote:
Cool I'm actually making a platform dolly to hold a camera operator, but the track design looks good. Kinda what I was thinking about, railroad tracks of a kind. How did you attach PVC to the 1x4s did you use screws?

Yep. Just plain screws worked fine. And I estimate that the PVC is still plenty strong enough for an operator as well.

As for the platform and the T shape idea, maybe a heavy duty drawes slide assembly would work nicely.

Like this:

Posted 5 years ago #
ThomasTyndan
Member

Awsome, thanks again I will see about building my own.

Posted 5 years ago #
Endeavor
Member

Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

Posted 5 years ago #