For a long time I've wanted to build the parts of a clock that handle the interaction between the minute hand and the hour hand. Scouring the web, I ran across Gary's Clocks, a site that offers up free plans for fancy wooden clocks, including DXF files. Perfect! I copied the necessary gears from the file, created new minute/hour hands, and designed a new base for them to sit on. I also scaled everything up by a factor of 2, and changed the diameter of the center holes to work nicely with 0.5" bolts. Unlike a regular mechanical clock in which the hands would be able to "slip" so you could set the time, I wanted this to specifically be a clock driven by the minute hand turning. So, I glued the hands and the axle-bound gears to the axles.

Problems

Very few problems this week as compared to last. I had a little trouble with the shop bot making the bottom edges of the wood very rough; I had to file down every tooth of every gear and pinyon. On my first go, I cut the center diameters of the gears too large, causing too much play and slippage on the axles, which made the gears not merge well. On both tries, I misjudged the proper distance between the two axles, and had to cut new axles with the drill press. Dealing with large wood things seems to increase the need for post-processing in the shop. Also, dealing with large wood things means that mess-ups use up a lot of material.

I plan to use it for some kind of interactive art piece, as soon as I figure out how to attach an angular position sensor.