A creator called Camera Things has built the first 3D-printed camera shutter with variable speed control, using a sliding two-strip design driven by a rubber band. No previous printable shutter has achieved this. The mechanism works by partially returning one blind strip after cocking, which changes the width of the light gap passing over the film, the functional equivalent of adjusting shutter speed on a conventional camera.
The engineering tradeoffs are where this article earns a full read. The rubber-band actuation is simple, but the geometry required to make variable width work inside a printed body is not. Space limitations forced a half-frame implementation, meaning the shutter only covers part of a standard 35mm frame, a constraint serious enough that Camera Things has already scrapped this design in favor of a vertical leaf approach.
The files are not public. Camera Things is moving to a more complex leaf shutter, which means the next version will be harder to replicate but potentially more capable. Proficient CAD users can reverse-engineer the concept from the video. The original Hackaday post also links to a prior fixed-speed printable shutter from February 2025 for direct comparison.
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