Slaying the Bastard Button - Inon 330

[davehicks 123]

I've been using the Inon 330 strobes for quite a while now, and I have been very happy with the performance and reliability of these strobes. But as lots of Inon users have experienced, they do have a couple of annoying habits. 

1) The Bastard Button - There is a spring-loaded pre-flash control that needs to be depressed and twisted into a locked down position to prevent pre-flash. It has a tendency to accidentally pop up and start spoiling photos. Bastard!!

2) The Power switch rotates from Off, TTL settings, Full power, and Manual power. It's not hard to bump the switch from Manual to Full while adjusting the other dial to different power levels. All of a sudden, your strobe goes from 1/8 to Full Dump, spoiling shots.

I have only occasionally run afoul of Bastard Button, but bumping into Full Dump mode happens way too often to me. While out diving a couple of weekends ago I had both happen to me on the same dive! Super annoying as it sometimes takes a few ruined shots in the heat of the moment before you notice the problem. I decided that this problem needs to be vanquished for all time!

Now for about ten years I have been following developments in 3-d printing and toyed with the idea of getting one. This Inon button problem was the nail popping up in my path and a 3d printer was my hammer. While on the safety stop of the dive where I was bit twice, I had an idea of how to design a simple 3-d printed part that could fit the bill. 

I did a bit more research on printers and chose to buy a Creality 3 S1 printer. It's a highly rated printer that gets consistently good marks for ease of use, simple setup, and clean results out of the box with minimal tweaking. It was selling for $350 on Amazon with another $20 for a big spool of PLA plastic.  While everyone else was watching the Superbowl, I set up the printer. It was pretty simple to assemble but required more work to get it calibrated and leveled. This printer has an auto-leveling feature, but for that to work it first needs to be manually leveled with four spring loaded wheels that adjust the print bed. A good Youtube video walks you through this necessary process that is not in the manual. This was likely a one-time only operation, and probably took about an hour to get a good grasp of how it worked and to fine tune the bed level. Once that was done the auto-leveling worked beautifully. 

The next step of was pick out a CAD package to draft out my part. This is by far the most complex part of this project. I decided to try FreeCad. There is a learning curve to use these CAD apps, but there are lots of tutorials on Youtube that will help you get started. I watched one getting started tutorial that provide enough information to get me started on my design. If took a few hours to learn and replicate the steps in the tutorial, and then make a first attempt at my design. 

My V1 attempt was to just make a 2D flat plate of my basic design to test out the fidelity of the printer. I was very impressed by how cleanly the part printed out. Smooth, no jaggies, precise and clean. I fitted it on the strobe, but a few dimensions were a faction of a millimeter off target. A little filing and the part would fit on the strobe.

I made a few adjustments to my design for the off-target measurements and added the 3-Dimensional part of the design. I needed a springy arm to lock the Power Switch and a Cylinder to surround and cover the pre-flash button. This took another couple of hours with another tutorial and several attempts to realize my design in FreeCad. I ended up deleting and redrawing the whole thing at least twice as I gained proficiency in FreeCad and was able to clean up the initial trial and error mess that I started with. I finally had a design that was functionally complete.

My V2 print came out really great and fit the strobe almost perfectly. I made the spring arm a few millimeters to short however and would need to make a final adjustment for that. I found a couple of other 1/2 millimeter tweaks for a better fit as well. 

Below is my V3 design that I took on a test dive this morning. No issues with it as all and it worked like a charm. It does the job of protecting the switch settings and does not interfere with normal use of the strobe at all. I'll upload this design to Thingiverse shortly for anyone else interested in making one of these for themselves. If I think of any more improvements or get suggestions, I'll keep it up to date.

[ The current design has a 2mm base that fits over the electrical socket, and is held in place by screwing down the socket cap. ]

 

[ The spring arm sits astride the power switch and provides resistance turning from Manual to Full positions. It does not press on the switch when in Off or Manual position. ]

 

[ A protective cylinder surrounds the Pre-flash "Bastard Button" ensuring that it can't be bumped or released. ]

[ Head on view of the installed part. ]

[Isaac Szabo 102]

Very nice! I have found a 3D printer to be so helpful for things like this. 

[davehicks 123]

27 minutes ago, Isaac Szabo said:

Very nice! I have found a 3D printer to be so helpful for things like this. 

What are some of your favorite objects you've printed? I have a few more ideas in mind but this is the idea that pushed me off the fence to go get a printer and learn enough to use it.

[hyp 115]

Zoom gears. They are so overpriced…200€ for a f***ing gear? Come on! The first one took me two tries. All the ones after were easy. Had to print them at 3d printing services though because I didn’t have my own printer. 

[davehicks 123]

Very nice. Have you shared your designs?

Edited February 17 by davehicks

[Isaac Szabo 102]

10 hours ago, davehicks said:

What are some of your favorite objects you've printed? I have a few more ideas in mind but this is the idea that pushed me off the fence to go get a printer and learn enough to use it.

Focus gears, diffusers, snoots, flash trigger, lens ports, shades, caps, external monitor housing, etc. I might even attempt a camera housing at some point. Obviously some of that stuff is advanced, but half of those things are pretty simple/easy. Now that you've pushed through the barrier of buying a printer and learning some CAD, I'm sure you'll find more uses for it. 

[Floris Bennema 27]

Great idea and nice that you share!

I found that Thinkcad (free from Autocad) is very intuitive and easy to learn.

Made two Nauticam focus gears for older MFT lenses (Panasonic G Vario 1:3.5-5.6 / 14-42 ASPH) and Trioplan 50 lens) and hade it made at a 3D printing firm. The big disadvantage is of 3d services that you pay twice, the design of the first version mostly has some flaws.

Floris

Edited February 19 by Floris Bennema

[davehicks 123]

26 minutes ago, Floris Bennema said:

Great idea and nice that you share!

I found that Thinkcad (free from Autocad) is very intuitive and easy to learn.

Made two Nauticam focus gears for older MFT lenses (Panasonic G Vario 1:3.5-5.6 / 14-42 ASPH) and Trioplan 50 lens) and hade it made at a 3D printing firm. The big disadvantage is of 3d services that you pay twice, the design of the first version mostly has some flaws.

Floris

I am curious to know what the cost to print was from a service?

[Floris Bennema 27]

They were 25 and 35 euros per object.  The price is calculated as you upload, it was hard to guess where it was based on.

[polyroly 7]

On 2/16/2023 at 9:32 PM, davehicks said:

I'll upload this design to Thingiverse shortly for anyone else interested in making one of these for themselves...

Nice project! Did you ever up to Thingyverse? I looked but could not find it. Did it work out the way you hoped? I like the spring 'detent' in particular. Did any of it cause any rinsing issues? I would love to print one and try it out

I got a Prusa and love it. I have done two Fiber Optic Snoots for my Inon 330 - the first print was soon after the strobe was introduced  and i couldn't get a fitted snoot in time for a trip so a friend let me print one on his Form Labs unit. I was not expecting such fine detail and it worked out great. The fiber bundles were not quite so easy but in the end came out good. I positioned the main bundle to catch the focus light so aiming is not too hard. I drew it on Rhino, which was not so easy - now I use Fusion which is a pain - the program is great - Autodesk not so much. FreeCad looks like a smart choice, I am trying to get the courage to move over.

This year I am making a long fiber arm for backlight and I incorporated one of the optical snoots on the cap. I'll see how that works out.

[davehicks 123]

43 minutes ago, polyroly said:

Nice project! Did you ever up to Thingyverse? I looked but could not find it. Did it work out the way you hoped? I like the spring 'detent' in particular. Did any of it cause any rinsing issues? I would love to print one and try it out

I got a Prusa and love it. I have done two Fiber Optic Snoots for my Inon 330 - the first print was soon after the strobe was introduced  and i couldn't get a fitted snoot in time for a trip so a friend let me print one on his Form Labs unit. I was not expecting such fine detail and it worked out great. The fiber bundles were not quite so easy but in the end came out good. I positioned the main bundle to catch the focus light so aiming is not too hard. I drew it on Rhino, which was not so easy - now I use Fusion which is a pain - the program is great - Autodesk not so much. FreeCad looks like a smart choice, I am trying to get the courage to move over.

This year I am making a long fiber arm for backlight and I incorporated one of the optical snoots on the cap. I'll see how that works out.

I am going to wait until after my upcoming 10 day dive trip to Australia before I upload to Thingiverse. I've done about 5-6 dives using the parts now, but I am curious to see how they handle 30-40 dives. I'm in Seattle to the conditions tested so far are 40-50f surface temps and 45f water temps. Austrailia should have some 90f surface temps to contend with.

I first printed with PLA, and a suggestion was offered that PLA+ might work better in warm weather. So, I re-drafted the part in Autodesk Fusion 360 (which I think is better/smarter than FreeCad) and printed a couple of more parts in PLA+. The prints came out about the same fidelity but are slightly more elastic. I started making a few new designs (regulator servicing tools) with PETG today which was a learning experience. I might re-print the Button Blockers again in this material to see how it works out.

No problems using the parts on my 330 strobes. It is working as intended and it cleans up just fine. I left the protection cylinder open with a little space so that the button could flush out in the rinse tank. We'll see how that works out in the harsher conditions of a multi-day / multi-dive situation.

If you want a copy of the STL to make your own print, send me a private message and I will drop a file share to you.

Several people have asked me to print a few of the Button Blockers for them as they don't have printers. I sold them a pair for $20 +$5 USA shipping.

Edited March 8 by davehicks

[hellhole 26]

The funny thing is that ... during the z240 days.. everyone complain that we can turn the knob properly.. and we went to 3d print knobs that made it easier to turn...

Now we have the reverse for z330.. heh...

Sent from my SM-S908E using Tapatalk

[polyroly 7]

12 hours ago, davehicks said:

I am going to wait until after my upcoming 10 day dive trip to Australia before I upload .... as they don't have printers.

Testing = good. Around here in Toronto there are some public  printing 'labs' where you can go and use printers. Even the Toronto public library has some you can use. Being exposed to and learning the different filaments, elasticity, shrinkage properties etc. are the attractions of the group environment.  I am just starting with Nylon and ABS which is easy on small bits but harder on anything bigger than an egg.

 

@ Hellhole, Ha yes!, whoever said design is a straight line never had more than one client!

Edited March 8 by polyroly

[davehicks 123]

Update on this project:

As promised, I have uploaded my design to the Thingiverse library.

You can find it at: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6017150

I have used my Inon Button Locks on a few dozen dives now, including a couple of 5-10 day dive trips where I did at least 3 dives every day. Both warm and cold climates. It worked great and performed exactly as designed. No pre-flash buttons popped up and not shots were ruined by errant strobe settings!

It also held up well with repetitive dives. The presence of the lock did not result in any salt build up on the controls of the strobe. Normal post dive-day rinsing was enough to keep things clean. I'd suggest removing it once in a while, maybe at the end of a long dive trip for a deep clean. But it definitely does not need to be removed after a day of diving to avoid salt buildup.

I have printed in PLA, PLA+, and PETG. They all worked the same. For long term best results I would suggest PETG as it will stand up to UV exposure better than PLA. PETG is a bit more flexible, but it did not impact the functionality.

[hellhole 26]

Thanks for following up.. and putting it in thingverse...

Sent from my SM-S908E using Tapatalk

[Floris Bennema 27]

Great project for Inon owners, thanks.

[davehicks 123]

44 minutes ago, Floris Bennema said:

Great project for Inon owners, thanks.

You are welcome. Happy printing!