DIY - 3D printed LCD screen cover for Leica M10 series cameras

This DIY project born in a recent conversation with Fred Miranda (thanks for the idea!) considering 3D print use for minimalistic cover of Leica M10 screen. Main point is to break the habit of overusing screen and focus more on the taking pictures flow. Second benefit is to providing more comfortable grip to the camera when pulling it out of the bag (the screen surface is quite slippery.

Here's what is currently made.

I was prototyping a lot with this cover to make it tight and compact but also very easy to 3D print. Most challenging area was near the eyepiece cover, so I initially designed cover for the screen only. It required slight cutting out the top left edge to fit the eyepiece - that is how idea appeared of using eyepiece as a holder option.

The visible buttons were still distracting and cover was not held in place well.

Next design step was the attempt to involve the hotshoe mount to hold the cover from the top. I made it with hinge to allow flipping cover up, but resulting desing looked rather ugly and breaking nice lines of original camera look. I talked about that with Fred and we both agree that involving hotshoe is not a good option. Well, back to the use of caliper and drawing board, or rather to say more experiments in 3D modelling software.

I extended cover over the buttons only but it didn't look well when printed because buttons area is more narrow than screen. Next attempt was to keep the cover lines rectangular and only introduce slight contours curve under the rangefinder eyepiece cover. The resulting model came out as good as I expected with first test print.

Resulting screen cover (called it version V3A) has tight fit in top and side areas and few millimeters loose in the bottom screen edge. Here is extra support bar near the left buttons. I'm using large sheet of textured black adhesive vinyl film to attach it to bottom camera plate. Vinyl sticker size is 90mm X 65mm. You can also use gaffer tape or electric tape.

It allows to open the screen cover by flipping it down.

Protector is making camera only 0.5mm thicker.

I'll keep working on this design to introduce compact hinge version instead of using adhesive film or tape. Will keep this article posted with further updates and improvements, so stay tuned.

My 3D models are free to download and personal use:

Printables

Thingiverse