Printable Fix For Time Card Clock Has Owner Seeing Red Again

When [Morley Kert] laid eyes on a working time card-punching clock, he knew he had to have it for a still-secret upcoming project. The clock seemed to work fine, except that after a dozen or so test punches, the ink was rapidly fading away into illegibility. After a brief teardown and inspection, [Morley] determined that the ribbon simply wasn’t advancing as it should.

This clock uses a ribbon cassette akin to a modern typewriter, except that instead of a feed spool and a take-up spool, it has a short length of ribbon that goes around and around, getting re-inked once per revolution.

When a card is inserted, a number of things happen: a new hole is punched on the left side, and an arm pushes the card against the ribbon, which is in turn pushed against the mechanical digit dials of the clock to stamp the card.

Finally, the ribbon gets advanced. Or it’s supposed to, anyway. [Morley] could easily see the shadow of a piece that was no longer there, a round piece with teeth with a protrusion on both faces for engaging both the time clock itself and the ribbon cassette. A simple little gear.

After emailing the company, it turns out they want $95 + tax to replace the part. [Morley] just laughed and fired up Fusion 360, having only caliper measurements and three seconds of a teardown video showing the missing part to go on. But he pulled it off, and pretty quickly, too. Version one had its problems, but 2.0 was a perfect fit, and the clock is punching evenly again. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Okay, so maybe you don’t have a time card clock to fix. But surely you’ve had to throw out an otherwise perfectly good coat because the zipper broke?

Thanks for the tip, [Zane]!

8 thoughts on “Printable Fix For Time Card Clock Has Owner Seeing Red Again

  1. “I think 10° will be better”
    “I don’t know how many will fill up the circle completely”

    We are so used to have machines easying everything that something as simple as 360 / 10 = 36 stops being obvious…
    Sometime I feel dumb when looking at the screen at my calculator, like “of course, I knew it !”…

  2. Impute: To imply a value of something, computed based on a person or group behavior. e.g. taking a 1:100 chance of dying, to save $10. You value your life at $1000.

    This guy values his time at $95/# of hours it took to do this project.
    I value my time at $0/time it took to make this post.

    We’re both idiots. At least he will make $0.04 in youtube views.

    Hackaday has sunk to this?
    Being use to promo a lame hipsters youtube channel. ‘Vintage time clock’, that uses a dot matrix printer ribbon, likely 80s ‘vintage’.
    He 3d printed a gear, twice! Used calipers! Trial and errored his design!

    Nothing got blown up, not even any fire, no 555s, just a ribbon advance mechanism part. 1/10.

    He should have used a small homemade combustion turbine to advance the ribbon. Half a turbopump, running on toxic hypergolic rocket fuel. At very least a pulsejet. So nobody could sneak in the side door and clock in late without being noticed.

    1. Sure your name isn’t FurzeFan001?

      Lol, jk, but seriously, just watch Colin Furze if that’s your thing and I’ll stick with SuperFastMatt and AgingWheels, no worries.

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