Craynerd builds Wilding's - Woodward's Gearless Clock

[DaveH]

Coming along nicely Chris.

DaveH

[CallMeAl]

Great work!  I'm just clocking in on this build.  Skillfully done and will be fun to watch it come together as time goes on.

Al

[raynerd]

Al, that was terrible 

 

Thanks, yes, it is coming on OK !

Chris

[kwackers]

If I can just chime in, in my o' pinion it's certainly ticking over nicely. There's no escape now, hopefully it'll go like clockwork and not end up on the scrap pallet.

[John Hill]

Nice job Chris.

[raynerd]

     ohh dear me .... Al, look what you started! Kwackers - how long did you spend thinking that one up 

John, thanks for the comment!

[spuddevans]

Coming along nicely Chris wont be long til the tick tock of horological success is heard.


Tim

[andyf]

Kwackers, those jokes were appawling!

Andy

[kwackers]

Sorry, hope they didn't wind you up, but with so little time on my hands...

[cfellows]

Nice work, Chris.  Always loved mechanical clocks.

Chuck

[raynerd]

Tim - hope so!
Chuck - any clock on your project list?

Went on to make the pin wheel over the last couple of nights. Still not finished but getting there, just needs pinning. Ok here goes:







Before drilling, I needed to check the drill size was ok for pinning all 60 x 1/32" pins without the need for glue. I used a 0.75mm drill in a piece of test material and it worked really well. I used the drill as a press






Then setup the wheel on the CNC rotab and drilled the holes




Took a bit of a risk as I feel I can make a better job of the crossing out on the mill rather than by hand fully. However, the arbour wasn`t strong enough so risked moving it to another bigger chuck. I managed to centre it and of course checked it before I started any cutting but it worked out well.


Now all the front face and crossing out needs fully cleaning up. Problem is that when it is pinned you can`t really get at it all so the wheel needs totally finishing before being pinned.

[andyf]

Nice looking wheel, Chris.

Those holes are very closely spaced; you may need a smaller chuck (a pin chuck?) to press the pins home. .

Did you end up making the 1/32" pins, or did you find somewhere to buy 'em?

Andy

[raynerd]

Hi Nick, sorry I should have explained; I just used the chuck on the test one. For the rest I`m going to use a 1/8" steel rod drilled 0.8mm to the depth of the required protruding length of the pin, the pin will be a snug fit. I`ll push the pin in, which will be held in place with a magent on the outside of the steel rod. Then I`ll obviously push the pin home and in an ideal world it should be a good enough fit to locate and pull itself out of the holder!

Sounds good in theory doesn`t it  

I couldn`t find premade 1/32 dowel pins anywhere so I`m going to have to cut them all. Until I had the 1/32" rod in front of me I didn`t realise how thin it was so this really shouldn`t be a problem.

Hopefully a little more progress over the next couple of days.  

[raynerd]

Just a note on the count wheel. I spent a few hours last night reading Gadget Builders site and his Gearless clock build and he has put an update on the site 10 July, I think acutally based on something we discussed:

So info below direct quote from www.gadgetbuilder.com

An observation on the count wheel is that the teeth are deeper than necessary. Making the teeth only about 30 thou deep with one tooth more than full depth would make adjusting the pawl to catch the deflector much easier. As it is, this adjustment has little margin for error. The wheel would look much different, of course, with just small triangular notches and one large notch. I used Loctite to secure the count pawl because setting the pickup of the deflector is touchy and it kept getting knocked out of kilter during testing; Locktite in this one spot made life easier.

This sounds a really great idea and something he discussed with me via email but trying to follow the build log by John Wilding, I didn`t really want to make any changes to the working plans. Now in retrospect, I am going to rebuild the countwheel to this new design.

When you look at my video of the count wheel moving, all that is actually required is enough depth on each tooth for the 1/32" wire pawl to catch a tooth and pull it forward and then for the same dia wire as a backstop to lock into the back of a tooth. 30thou will be a good enough flat back to the tooth for this to happen and it`ll mean that the deep tooth will look more like one of my normal teeth and therefore having an acceptable slope for the pawls to climb. I can also see how awkward the deflector piece is going to be to set as the difference in drop is so slight. With smaller "normal" teeth it will be a more significant drop and easier to set the deflector to "catch" it. 

[Rob.Wilson]

Hi Nick, sorry I should have explained; I just used the chuck on the test one. For the rest I`m going to use a 1/8" steel rod drilled 0.8mm to the depth of the required protruding length of the pin, the pin will be a snug fit. I`ll push the pin in, which will be held in place with a magent on the outside of the steel rod. Then I`ll obviously push the pin home and in an idea world it should be a good enough fit to locate and pull itself out of the holder!

Sounds good in theory doesn`t it 

 

Good plan Chris 


Count Wheel is coming along Great 



Rob

[NickG]

Brilliant work Chris, I've just seen the video 

[saw]

Nice work. 

[raynerd]

Finally after hours of trialing various methods I managed to get a method to cut the pins down to about 20 seconds a pin.

Knocked up this little punch. Both parts are silver steel and hardened. The small bit is obviously the punch and the large part has a matching hole of dia 0.22" (iirc) which is the length of the pin required. The large section is also cross drilled 0.8mm


Just got given a set of letter stamps so thoughts I`d try and use some for the first time putting my initials on the new tool


I milled two flats on the bottom of the large section so it can be held in the vice. Setup like shown below with the red box to collect the pins:




To pin the wheel I took a small piece of steel bar, drilled 0.8mm ensuring that with the pin pushed in fully, a small length was sticking out to push all the way through the brass of the wheel. I put a few tiny magnets on the pin holding guide to hold the pin in place which was just coping how "Gadget Builder" did when he built this clock.


Complete pinned wheel !!


Next to make the arbour and supporting frames and get it mounted on the clock. Then back to remake the count wheel   

[millwright]

Nice Work Chris, Wish i had the spare time on my hands to get some of my  machining done, whoops sorry wasnt meaning to start one of those runs of witty comments.

[raynerd]

I`m pleased you didn`t!     

[CallMeAl]

Great solution to your cutting pin problem. I sure like your pin wheel, looks fantastic!

Al

[NickG]

Genius idea and the wheel looks great! 

[DaveH]

Chris,

Well thought out, and nicely done.

DaveH

[saw]

Looking good. 

[Spurry]

Chris

Looks like you found a very neat solution to the problem. I thought that in one of the early posts you wanted a radiused end to the pins. How did you overcome that? Was any additional finishing required after shearing with the little gadget?

Pete