Part family

Mounts and adapters

Cold shoes, tripod plates, VESA adapters and rail clamps from a plain-English description, with the envelope and the holes measured before you print.

What to specify

  • The interface on each side, by name and by number: a 1/4-20 thread, an 18.5 mm shoe, a 75 mm VESA pattern, a 25 mm tube.
  • Which side is which, and the offset or thickness between them.
  • Whether a threaded interface is tapped in the part or a clearance hole for a bolt. Printed threads at this scale usually want to be clearance holes.
  • The block size, if it matters — otherwise say so and let the interfaces set it.
  • For a channel or rail: the internal width, the overhang of the lip, the height of the rail, and whether it is open at one end or both.
  • The clearance on a sliding fit. A shoe that slides needs a few tenths; a shoe sized exactly will not go on.

Prompts that work

A cold-shoe adapter that mounts to a 1/4-20 tripod thread, standard 18.5mm shoe width

A VESA 75 to 100 adapter plate, 4mm thick, M4 clearance holes on both patterns.

A clamp for a 25mm round tube with a 1/4-20 through hole on top, two M4 bolts pulling the halves together.

Measured examples

An adapter is defined entirely by what is on each end of it. Describe both interfaces properly and the part in between is almost arithmetic; describe one of them and you get a block with a hole in it.

Name the standard AND the number

"A cold shoe" and "1/4-20" are names of standards, and a name is a good start because it carries a shape with it. It is not enough on its own: standards have variants, and the number you care about is usually the one the standard leaves loose. Say the shoe is 18.5 mm wide internally. Say the VESA pattern is 75 mm, not "VESA". Say the tube is 25 mm. The example below asked for both — a 1/4-20 thread and an 18.5 mm shoe — and still needed one clarifying round, because nothing in either standard says how big the block is.

Tapped or clearance

A 1/4-20 tapped hole printed in PLA will strip on the first camera you hang off it. A 6.5 mm clearance hole and a bolt through it from below will not. This is a decision, it changes the part, and it is worth putting in the prompt rather than leaving to whichever is assumed.

A channel is four numbers

Internal width, lip overhang, rail height, and whether it is open at one end or both. All four are in the example below's spec, and three of them are things you would have to go and measure off a real shoe if the prompt had left them out. Say the ones you know and ask about the ones you do not.

What gets measured — and what is not

The envelope, the holes and their diameters, the volume, the thinnest wall. A channel width is only measured when the spec names it as a slot, and the example below is honest about the consequence: its report covers the block and the bolt hole, and the 18.5 mm rail gap was measured for the example page by hand, off the same file you can download, and labelled as such. A badge on this site says what was checked, not what was hoped.