1. Taking Measurements

The main problem with my last design is that the handles are very unique one-off pieces. If they were not so hard to make I would have made a bunch of steadicams of the same design for friends and people in exchange for money.

(the piece I'm talking about is the triangle shaped piece as picture below)

For the new design I instantly knew I wanted to make a piece that replaces that existing piece and holds the top grip in place.

I started first by placing the front end of the steadicam down on graph paper and traces out the shape of the circular holes from the t-joints. I then used the graph paper to find the mid point inside the circles and the mid point between the circles. I then places the top grip joint onto the paper to get an idea of where it goes and traced that out then.

This allowed be to measure the distance between all of the midpoints and this is important for when I design the new part in the 3D software. The last thing I then did was find out the inner and outer diameters of the pvc pipe and this allowed me to create the following template below to transfer into my 3D design.