Followers of this blog are well aware of my penchant for tripods. I currently own six and, hand to Bible, I use them all. To them, it will come as no surprise that my recent love affair with 3D printing has now turned to that object. I spent a good portion of the weekend designing two models, a super light weight baby (perfect for desktop macro photography) which stands a foot tall and a collapsible big brother which is twice that. When I got to work this morning, I launched a single print containing all four parts (3 legs and an apex). When it was time to head home my tripod was done. All that remained to be done was attach the legs with standard hardware and affix a suitable size ball head. Despite their diminutive appearance, the legs turned out to be incredibly strong as did the apex. The feature which establishes the leg angle is not quite as stiff as I would like so it is back to OnShape for some refinement of the CAD model. The real beauty of 3D printing is that you can rapidly iterate on a design concept as often as needed to achieve your vision.