Frickin’ Amazing Clock

Wwood_clock_05e’ve featured a lot of clock builds, but this one, as the title suggests, is frickin’ amazing. Talented art student [Kango Suzuki] built this Wooden Mechanical Clock (Google translation from Japanese) as a project while on his way to major in product design. There’s a better translation at this link. And be sure to check out the video of it in motion below the break.

[Kango]’s design brief was to do something that is “easy for humans to do, but difficult for machines”. Writing longhand fits the bill, although building the machine wasn’t easy for a human either — he needed six months just to plan the project.

The clock writes time in hours and minutes on a magnetic board. After each minute, the escapement mechanism sets in motion almost 400 wooden cogs, gears and cams. The board is tilted first to erase the old numbers, and then the new numbers are written using four stylii.

The clock doesn’t have any micro controllers, Arduinos, servos or any other electronics. The whole mechanism is powered via gravity using a set of four weights. [Kango] says his biggest challenge was getting the mechanism to write the numbers simultaneously. While he managed the geometry right, the cumulative distortion and flex in the hundreds of wooden parts caused the numbers to be distorted until he tuned around the error.

[Kango]’s “Writing Clock” can be seen in the Tohoku University of Art and Design, from February 9th to February 14th, so if you are in that neck of the woods, do drop in and check it out. You might even catch him fine tuning his masterpiece.

Thanks to [Dave Ehnebuske] for sending in this tip.

22 thoughts on “Frickin’ Amazing Clock

    1. Don’t forget The Draughtsman and The Musician too!

      (these are seriously cool! I’ve seen them all in person three times now, since the museum where they’re kept is only a couple of blocks from where I work :) )

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