A customer came to us with a lens and a problem: he wanted to use his underwater wet lens on his action camera, but there was no mount that held the two together. We designed one. The result is a custom 3D-printed adapter that clips over the camera’s waterproof housing and holds the lens in front of the port with a satisfying snap.
Designed around two parts that never met
The adapter has to grip the housing on one side and carry the lens on the other, hold both perfectly centred, and still come on and off in seconds. We measured both parts, modelled the bracket in CAD and built in a snapping mechanism, a sprung latch that clicks over the housing and locks the lens in place without tools, screws or straps.
Printed, tested, repeated
Snap fits live or die by fractions of a millimetre, so this was an iterative job. We printed a string of prototypes, testing the clip force and fit on the real housing each time, until the latch engaged cleanly and held under a firm shake. The final version was printed in tough black filament to match the camera rig. It is a small piece of problem-solving we enjoy: no off-the-shelf part existed, so we made one that fits like it always did.
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