Belgian Railway Time For Your Home

December 26, 2021 by Jenny List 9 Comments

Some of the 20th century’s most iconic design and typography came to us through public signage in the various national railways of Europe. Were you to think of a Modernist clock face for example, the chances are that the prototype for your image hangs somewhere in one of the continent’s great railway terminals. If you don’t fancy getting on a train to see your favourite public timepiece, then maybe [EBP Controller] has a treat for you, with a 3D-printed double-faced Belgian railway station clock.

Behind the scenes the mechanism is simpler than appearances might lead the observer to believe, with each set of hands driven through a single gear to a motor. Controlling it all is an ESP8266, which is able to synchronise the clock exactly to an NTP server. It appears at first sight to have an unnecessarily large quantity of motors, but considering that there are two faces each with three hands the six motors each have a use. So while the real thing might require a heist from the SNCB, at least modernist clock fans can now have their own.

A Simple 3D Printed Gear Clock Shows Off How It Works

December 23, 2021 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

Analog clocks are beautiful things inside, using ornate gear trains to keep track of time in a dance of mechanical beauty. However, all too often, the complexity is hidden inside. This gear clock design from [Tada3], however, proudly shows off its workings.

A small stepper motor is used to run the clock’s movement, a small part of the 28BYJ-48 variety. The motor is driven once per second, making the gear train tick along in a rather compelling way that is somehow more visually interesting. Of course, with some modification to the design, continuous motion could easily be done as well.

The stepper motor is driven by an Arduino Nano, which also handles the timekeeping. One thing that’s missing is a real-time clock, something that should be added to the design if you wish it to keep accurate time. As it is, the included Arduino sketch simply uses the delay() function to time the stepping of the motor. It makes the clock tick along, but will quickly drift out of sync.

The design was also recreated in a YouTube video by [Mirko Pavleski], showing that the files are of suitable quality for building your own at home. We’ve seen some gear clock designs before, too, from the laser-cut to the neatly-nested. Video after the break.

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An orange 3D printed four digit clock with rotating segments

Be Mesmerized By The Latest Time Twister

December 18, 2021 by Chris Wilkinson 16 Comments

[Hans Andersson] has been creating marvelous twisting timepieces for over a decade, and we’re pleased to be able to share his latest mechanical clock contraption with our readers, the Time Twister 5.

In contrast to his previous LEGO-based clocks, version five of the Time Twister uses 3D printed segments, undoubtedly providing greater flexibility in terms of aesthetics and function. Each digit is a mechanical display, five layers vertical and three segments horizontal, with a total of three unique faces. Each layer of each display can be individually rotated by a servo, and this arrangement allows for displaying any number between zero and nine. The whole show is controlled by an Arduino MEGA and a DS3231 real-time clock.

Watching these upended prisms rotate into legible fifteen-segment digits is enjoyable enough already, but the mechanical sound created by this timepiece in motion is arguably even more satisfying. Check out the video below to see (and hear) for yourself. If you want to build one yourself, all the details are here.

We last covered [Hans Andersson] and his very first Time Twister clock way back in November 2011. Since then we’ve come across many impressive mechanical clocks, like this seven-segment work of art. We’re constantly impressed by the outstanding craftsmanship of these mechanical clocks, and it’s inspiring to see one of our OG horologists back in the saddle once more.

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A Nixie Clock, The Hard Way

December 15, 2021 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Notice: no vintage Hewlett Packard test equipment was harmed in the making of this overly complicated Nixie clock. In fact, if anything, the HP 5245L electronic counter came out better off than it went into the project.

HP 5245 hand-wired backplane — Beautiful hand-wired backplane in the HP 5245 counter.

We mention the fate of this instrument mainly because we’ve seen our fair share of cool-looking-old-thing-gutted-and-filled-with-Arduinos projects before, and while they can be interesting, there’s something deeply disturbing about losing another bit of our shared electronic heritage. To gut this device, which hails from the early 1960s and features some of the most beautiful point-to-point backplane wiring we’ve ever seen, would have been a tragedy, one that [Shahriar] wisely avoided.

After a bit of recapping and some power supply troubleshooting, the video below treats us to a tour of the Nixie-based beauty. It’s a wonderful piece, and still quite accurate after all these decades, although it did need a bit of calibration. Turning it into a clock non-destructively required adding a little bit of gear, though. Internally, [Shahriar] added a divide-by-ten card to allow the counter to use an external 10-MHz reference. Externally, an ERASynth++ programmable signal generator was used to send a signal to the counter from 0 Hz to 23,595.9 kHz, ramping up by 100 Hz every second.

The end result is the world’s most complicated 24-hour clock, which honestly wasn’t even the point of the build at all. It was to show off the glorious insides of the counter, introduce us to some cool new RF tools, and as always with [Shahriar]’s videos, to educate and inform. We’ve always enjoyed his wizardry, from his look into automotive radars to a million-dollar scope teardown, and this was another great project.

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A Nested Gear Clock

December 12, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 11 Comments

One of the most common projects we see here at Hackaday is a clock. It could just be that we as humans are fascinated by the concept of time or that making a piece of functional art appeals to our utilitarian sense. In that spirit, [Alexandre Chappel] set out to make a large mechanical clock with complex gears.

The initial design was made in Fusion360 over a week and then in a somewhat bold move, [Alexandre] started up the CNC and cut all the parts out of valchromat. The basic idea of the clock is that the numbers move on the clock, not the hands. So the clock should show 10:25 instead of moving hands to the 10 and the 5. Most of the clock is made of up stacked gear assemblies, geneva drives, and many bearings. A single stepper motor drives the whole clock, which [Alexandre] admits is a bit of a cheat since trying to add springs and an escapement would add complexity to an already complex clock. He did have to adjust and recut a few gears but most of the assembly came together nicely. Some 3d printed numbers dropped into the CNCed slots offers much-improved readability.

A few problems became apparent once the system was together. The numbers don’t quite line up perfectly, which is unfortunate. He mentioned that tighter tolerances on the gears would likely help there. A fatal design flaw on the smallest disk became apparent as it needs to turn a sixth of the circle whereas the outer circle is just turning a tenth of the circle. Mechanical advantage isn’t in [Alexandre’s] favor and the stepper skips some steps and it slowly makes its way towards the next second digit of the hour.

If you’re looking for more beautiful artistic clocks, why not check out this circuit sculpture one?

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A Flip Clock That Flips Up, Not Down

November 24, 2021 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

The venerable flip clock has become an outsized part of timekeeping culture that belies the simplicity of its mechanism. People collect and restore the electromechanical timepieces with devotion, and even seek to build new kinds of clocks based on split-flap displays. Designs differ, but they all have something in common in their use of gravity to open the leaves and display their numbers.

But what if you turned the flip clock on its head? That’s pretty much what [Shinsaku Hiura] accomplished with a flip clock that stands up the digits rather than flipping them down. The clock consists of three 3D-printed drums that are mounted on a common axle and linked together with gears and a Geneva drive. Each numeral is attached to a drum through a clever cam that makes sure it stands upright when it rotates to the top of the drum, and flops down cleanly as the drum advances. The video below makes the mechanism’s operation clear.

The build instructions helpfully note that “This clock is relatively difficult to make,” and given the extensive troubleshooting instructions offered, we can see how that would be so. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a mechanically challenging design from [Shinsaku Hiura]; this recent one-servo seven-segment display comes to mind.

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Significantly Improved Egg Timer Makes Pictionary Better

November 23, 2021 by Lewin Day 24 Comments

The traditional sand timer, known colloquially as an egg timer, served its purpose well over the centuries since its development. However, [MakerPaul] realised it had some significant flaws that were ruining Pictionary, and set out to fix the problem.

If you’re not looking directly at an egg timer, it’s easy to miss the moment when the timer runs out. Resetting the timer before it runs out also requires waiting for the sand to filter to one side. Clearly the world needs a better mousetrap.

The tipping timer from [MakerPaul] solves both those issues. In this design, sand flows down into an offset area, which tips the device over when reaching a certain time limit. Additionally, turning the device upside down and then rotating it instantly reloads the sand, meaning the timer can be reused immediately.

[MakerPaul] first came up with the idea about 20 years ago, refining it during the recent lockdowns. The design files are freely available for anyone that wishes to build one. [MakerPaul] isn’t commercializing the idea, but mentions that it would be great if anyone using it makes a donation to the Mind mental health charity.

Most timers we feature are electronic and digital, but it’s easy to appreciate the elegance of what [MakerPaul] has achieved here. As a bonus, he documented the entire project and its application in under 90 seconds. How good is that? Video after the break.

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