Hello Steve! My name is John and I am a 15-year-old who is very savvy about 3d printing. I have been 3d printing for about a year now and decided to make your original clock, the small pendulum clock. I just had a couple of questions:
Do tolerances matter a lot? I have an ender 3 s1 and have had some problems with elephant foot and was wondering if I needed to get that fully dialed in before printing everything.
Does the length of the wire matter a lot as well? I saw that the music wire had to be a certain length and was wondering if it was alright if it had a tolerance of 1/2 inches or so.
Is it okay to cut the tubes and arbors with a hacksaw? My family doesn't own a lot of expensive tools, only basic ones, so all I have is a hacksaw for the cutting of the tubes.
Thanks!
I use a 6" metal ruler to measure the music wire. Any wooden ruler should also work. The length only needs to be accurate within 1/16".
Hi steve! I have already purchased the materials from McMasterCarr and Amazon so I am probably going to stick to the small pendulum clock. Thanks for all you do! One last question: How would you recommend I measure the music wire?
Hi John,
Welcome to the forum. Hope to see you around for a while. Building clocks can be addicting.
1) I try to design the clocks with loose tolerances, but the original clock has the smallest gears so there is less room for error. The clock should run with some elephant foot. Too much and the gears will bind up. The solution is to file it away with a small hand file. Even better is to compensate for it in the slicer. I use 0.12mm most of the time. PrusaSlicer uses a positive number, but I believe Cura enters it as a negative number.
2) The music probably needs tolerances of about 1/16" or less.
3) I cut the tubes and 1/8" arbors with a fine-tooth hacksaw. It helps if you can clamp them in a vice with a notch to hold the tube securely. I have a hard wire cutter for the 1/16" arbors, but a hacksaw should also work. Many diagonal wire cutters are too soft to cut hardened music wire.
Also, make sure to download the STLs from MyMiniFactory. There are a few minor improvements compared to the version on Thingiverse.
If you have not yet acquired the needed parts for the original design, then you might consider the Easy Build clocks on MyMiniFactory. The simplified bill of materials will more than offset the cost of the design. You can download the assembly guide on this web site to see if it will work better for you.
Steve