Thursday, October 27, 2011

Count wheel designed

Here is the design of the count wheel version. I think it looks good. Will also be less noisy than the other version with the swinging pawl hitting the pendulum every second. This will impulse every 30 seconds. The trick will be getting the windings on the solonoid right. so that the pendulum doesn't end up swinging a crazy amount. I haven't wound a solonoid before, and I guess that every one is different, depending on the neatness of the windings (sounds weird but true...)
2D pic...
3D pic...

I received my 400 feet of .25mm enamel coated wire yesterday! So I will try to wind the solonoid this weekend. Cooooool

cheers
rosco

HOLD THE PHONES!

After doing a first prototype, it was apparent that it wasn't goin to work real well in the real world. Mainly the fact of too much friction if the clock isn't totally square.

So here is a redesign... There is a chassis out the back that supports both of the main shafts instead of them being supported on the back plane and the front plane. This will work a treat...I think :)
In the picture below, everything on flouro green has been redesigned.
I have kept some of the design cues from prototype1, but have changed the look a bit, so now you can see the electromagnet on the bottom right.
I think it looks much better.
cheers
rosco

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Possible count wheel design for electrical impulse

This is a design that could possibly work for making an electrical impulse happen...

When the pendulum (represented with a red line on the right) swings from left to right, it pulls the black arrow looking object with it, which in turn will catch on one of the teeth of the wheel and rotate it clockwise(like the red arrow shows). On the internal black circle, you can see a little hump, which is to the lower left of the red arrow. As the hump turns round with the toothed wheel, you will see that it pushes out the yellow outlined stick, and when pushed all of the way out, the yellow stick (which has an electrode on it), will touch the white stick (which has an electrode on it also), and will create an electrical circuit in turn,impulsing the pendulum. This 15 toothed wheel will basically make the connection happen every 30 seconds, which means that the pendulum will be impulsed every 30 seconds!
We'll see...
cheers
rosco

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

This one uses electrons!

This has also been in the pipeline for a while...

Inspiration for it comes from Clayton Boyer's "Electra" Which you can see on Youtube.
This design is yet to be finalized, but won't be too far away.
Essentially it is a gearless type clock. A lot of clocks tend to work like this, when there is no weight drive in the chain. But in saying that, you could just use the red toothed wheel to be able to get the movement from the pendulum, and use 2 gear ratios to drive the minute and hour wheel, like a traditional weight driven clock.. The gears would probably introduce more friction though, which would directly impact on the pendulums momentum.

Come to think of it, I think I might change the design and do away with the little catch that swings on the pendulum. Instead I might use a countwheel, to close the electrical contacts. I think it might be less intrusive to the pendulums swing.
I'll keep you up to date!
cheers
rosco

Friday, October 21, 2011

GoodNight,GoodMorning!

Good Night...

Good Morning!
Well, She's still very prototype, but she has run all night for the first time, first go! I think I have said earlier that I love coming downstairs in the morning to see that they have been ticking along by themselves all night while I've been sleeping. We'll see how she keeps going...
P.S. the time wasn't set when I went to bed
P.P.S. Are clocks a he or a she...I think of them as a he, but there is that saying, "Mother Nature, Father Time", so maybe they are he's.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

ITS ALIVE!


Here is the Gravity Escapement in real life!
I cut the parts on the weekend...It seems a lot easier to cut than the others...could just be me getting better at creating the tool paths.
It kind of worked when assembled, but if I put too much power into the system with my finger, it would skip 2 or 3 beats.
So I went and redesigned some parts and installed them.
1st leg and wheel prototype...I thought that the small angle faces on the ends of the spokes were slipping off. So i decided to make spokes that required the wheel to be recoiled a little, kind of like a hook, but they just didn't release. Sorry for the bad pics, but you can see it above over to the right with the clear perspex arm.



So I made a new prototype which might release earlier because I thought that the spokes might just be catching on the edge and letting go.

You will see below that the action happens so fast...By looking very closely, I saw that the skipping problem was caused by the small black arm that is close to horizontal was dropping off the steel pegs. So I sticky taped a small piece of perspex above it and that stopped the problem!
Although the escapement was actually working, there was still a problem with it impulsing the pendulum way too much and making it swing too far. You can see above a small bit of aluminium taped to the top of the pendulum and also a small recess ground out of the clear perspex on the bottom right.
Here is a video of the escapement working. But working with a 1 second per swing pendulum instead of what I originally intended to use, which was a 1/2 second swing.
There are a couple of reasons for thinking about going with a 1 second swing over a 1/2 second swing.
1 The escapement is impulsing too much for the 1/2 second swing pendulum, which is caused, I think, by the arm being too heavy being made from the perspex.
2 The large impulse is working great for the 1 second swing pendulum
3 I have already noticed that there is going to have to be a very large weight to drive the clock. That weight can be HALVED INSTANTLY by keeping the 12 spoke wheel and halving one of the gearing ratios.
4 Upon running the clock on the 1 second pendulum, the noise created by the escapement is no where near as a racket only clicking every 2 seconds instead of every second. ( This type of escapement is regarded as one of the most accurate, but it is noisier than most )

Some more pics to have a look at...
Well that's the latest update!
Over the next couple of days, I will be finalizing the escapement design and cut a new gear ratio just behind the escapement from being 40 to 8 teeth, to being 40 to 16 teeth...or i may even change the ratio on the large right wheel from being 60 to 8 teeth, to being 60 to 16 teeth...which is probably a better solution, because it will make the right wheel more similar size to the left side.
Actually no...I'll do the large wheel in the middle, which is 64 to 8 to be 64 to 16, then it will be easier to see the teeth from behind the face. Fewwww. Glad thats over! :)
See ya soon!