Outlining Models (Week of 3/2)
- vvaldezmelgar
- Mar 6
- 2 min read
Hello All! This week was a very CAD focused week for the Mechanical Clock. I was mostly just modeling and sketching out stuff all week. I also started a side quest for Mr.L but that was also more modeling. I don't have a lot of things to talk about in the preview so let's just jump into it.
Starting off on Monday, I got started on the outside design of the clock. It's a bit easier to design the mechanics of the clock when I know how much space I'm working with. I used a bunch of parameters so I could got back a change the measurements if I need more space when modeling the gears. The outside design will look a lot like my reference picture as that's basically what I'm making but way more complicated. I also figured out what escapement I'm gonna use within the clock. An escapement is the mechanism that keeps the clock in time with a pendulum or spring. I'm going to use a spring escapement as it's the only option that really works for the design I'm going for. The problem with using a spring escapement is that I know that the spring will cause me headaches when I start building this and I'm likely going to have to model it myself. As I found like 20 different pendulum escapement models but only one spring escapement. The one spring I found is fine but it just doesn't work that well with plan I have for the gears so I'm going to have to change it a bit, but it is a good jumping off point. I was able to get most of the design model done by Monday's end.
We didn't have school Tuesday, so coming back on Wednesday I planned on finishing the design model and maybe starting the mechanics model. Though, I did get side tracked by a seemly quick modeling job that Mr.L needed someone to do. He works on an old NAVY ship turned museum and had an old metal case that held black powder for the bullets on the ship when it was working. Since they needed more to show in the museum, Mr.L asked me to model the top and bottom covers as well as the lid to the casing. We are going to make the body of the case out of some cheap metal. Taking the measurements of the casing were a bit tricky was it just built in a way that made taking measurements a pain to deal with. The lid was the easiest thought, so that was the first part I banged out. The other parts were a bit tricky as they were all attracted to the main casing body so I had to measure around the body. The whole side project took all of Wednesday to finish, Mr.L said he was going to start printing them after checking them on his own time so my part was done.
On Thursday, I just finished modeling the outside design for the clock and started at least outline where I wanted all the gears to go in the inside of the clock. I plan to getting halfway through the mechanics model by the end of Friday, so we'll see if I can.
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