Calumet CK7075 Gimbal Head £199 - but not worth it!

..... bearing in mind the Wimberley MK2 is £510 @ WEX!
 
Scrap this, early testing revealed a serious design flaw! Mines going back.
 


Part A, the mounting boss, is made of anodised alloy
Part B, which is screwed into the arm with 3 screws, is made of steel
Part C, the arm, is made of solid cast alloy
Part D is the needle roller thrust bearing, the only bearing in this assembly
Part E is a friction pad made of Nylon
Part F is the transfer rod made of steel
Part G is a threaded steel rod (with a knob on the end, not shown, make your own joke here)

So, part B is fixed into part C first with three cap heads. And now for the problem bit, part A is fixed into those 2 with one M6 button head (screw fully threaded) bathed in thread locker and tightened so the bearing can just move freely. With me so far? This means that with no load on the friction pad (which pushes part A into part B) there is already a small amount of wobble. The head of the fixing screw is steel, obviously like the rest of it(!) and sits in the arm casting recess which is alloy. As the head goes round these two parts "chafe" so the head gets looser. If you tighten the screw it just takes up the slack and then chafes loose again! To make this worse, parts A and B are not a very close fit and wobble anyway. To make things worse still, as you apply a load to the pad E, it pushes A and B together causing friction (the whole point of it!) between an alloy part and a steel part, one of which will wear very quickly! The head does not wobble if E is very tight, but this means it's not a gimbal anymore!
 
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Hmmm. Poor choice of materials, inherent design fault, cheaper to buy in, lower cost to purchaser, large profit to reseller. About right?
 
So for those of us that haven't seen a wimberley etc or a benro for that matter. What do they have that stops the wearing process on their gimbals?
 
Euan said:
So for those of us that haven't seen a wimberley etc or a benro for that matter. What do they have that stops the wearing process on their gimbals?
Click to expand...


Not sure as I haven't taken a Wimberley to bits, yet!

Fair play to Calumet though no problem with a full refund.
 
Beagletorque said:
Not sure as I haven't taken a Wimberley to bits, yet!
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I like the yet bit! Was hoping someone could enlighten us a bit. Cracking drawing though
 
I know this is a bit old now, and Beagletorque seems to have far more engineering knowledge than me, but:

I bought this Calumet gimbal head from their stand at the 2012 FOCUS show for a very good show price, and I am delighted with it.

I primarily use it for birding with either my Sony a850 and more lately my a77 coupled to the Sony 70-400 silver beast. The combination works really well, especially compared to my previous Manfrotto pistol grip ball head.

There may well be wear issues ahead, but for the amount mine gets used I am pleased with my purchase and would not dismiss it so easily.
 
I've used one of these regularly for 10 years or so with a heavy Canon 400 f2.8 lens. No issues whatsoever. I think it's a great bit of kit for the price.
 
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