DRK LAB · 3D-engineered for set work
DRK LAB was born from a dangerous mix: a rental technician surrounded by cameras all day, an obsession with well-designed solutions and a 3D printer that almost never stops. I design parts made for real-world use: robust, functional and with zero tolerance for cheap plastic that breaks on the first shoot.
My name is Fran. I’m an audiovisual technician, Director of Photography and a bit of a maker addict. I work every day at a professional rental house, which gives me something very valuable: I see up close what breaks, what’s missing and what could be much better designed. DRK LAB is my personal lab, where I turn those needs into real parts: card cases, protectors, mounts, grips and custom pieces that don’t exist in any catalogue but make life easier on set.
Everything starts with something annoying: a cap that keeps falling off, an adapter that doesn’t exist or an official accessory that’s too expensive for what it does. From there we define what needs to be solved and in which real-world context it will be used.
I work in Fusion 360 with parametric models. That allows me to tweak dimensions, tolerances and variants for different cameras, rigs or workflows without redesigning everything from scratch every time.
Parts are tested in rental environments and on real sets. If something doesn’t survive the pace of a shooting day, it gets redesigned. The goal is not only to look good in photos, but to work in the hands of a stressed technician.
I print mainly on Bambu Lab printers and switch to technical materials when needed: matte PLA for general product, reinforced materials for parts that need to withstand impacts, heat or continuous load.
DRK LAB is built for people who actually live in the audiovisual world and need more than generic accessories from a catalogue.
DRK LAB is not a huge factory or an endless marketplace. I’m not trying to compete with cheap plastic, but with solutions that actually get used every day. I don’t make parts that are only "pretty" for Instagram: they have to work on set. I’m not chasing absolute perfection, but I do care about precision so everything fits right the first time. And above all, I don’t sell hype: if something isn’t a good idea for your use case, I’ll tell you.
Tell me what you’re missing: a case, a mount, an adapter or something that doesn’t exist yet. Let’s see if DRK LAB is the right fit or if there’s a simpler way to solve it.