Mechanical Workings (Week of 2/25)
- vvaldezmelgar
- Feb 27
- 2 min read
Hello Everyone! Been a minute since my last post, huh? Our February break got a bit of overtime due to the massive snow storm over New England. We only really had two days of work within the Shop. I think I found my next big project that I actually going to finish this time. As I don't have much to talk about, let's just dive into the week!
Coming back Wednesday, I really had no idea on what to do next. I could do another prop project but I wasn't really feeling up to it. I really don't want to go back to the Hunter's Journal as the code just looks like mush to me. I was looking around on the internet for any inspiration when I came across a Ornery-Clock, a mini planetary that tells the time of day. As I looked into how to make it, it required a quartz clock mechanism, which we don't have in the shop. That did give me an idea, what if I just make my own clock. I know that a few people in this Shop has made clocks before, but they've all been digital clocks or based in digital. I plan on making a full mechanical clock, gears and all. As of writing this, I plan on using motors for the turning of the clock hands instead of a weight or spring, though I only plan to using the motors to make sure the clock is on time and using gears and stuff to control the speed of the hands. It's been a while since I wrote code so it was a bit tricky as I had to remember all the functions but I was to write some small basic code that turns a LED on for a minute and off for a minute as I wanted to test stuff with LEDs before moving onto the motors. I wasn't able to do much else Wednesday as a bunch of time was spent on just finding the Ornery-Clock.
On Thursday, I realized that I don't know much about mechanical clocks nor how they work. This info I would need if I wanted to make one myself. I spent most of Thursday researching and reading about how these clocks work. They work by converting stored energy from weights or springs into controlled movement using a gear train and an escapement mechanism, which is just a things regulated by a wheel or pendulum to control how fast the hand moves at it's connected to the gears that move the hands. I got some basic sketches down at the end of Thursday and I plan to finishing those sketches Friday and hopefully starting the model, which I know will take me some time.
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