Note: Wix forums will be deleted on 15-Oct-2025 and moved to the tab labeled "Groups". Hopefully, it will be easier to use than the existing forum

To see this working, head to your live site.

SP8 DEADBEAT CLOCK

I just printed a few more SP8's using the Deadbeat pendulum arm. But I'm having a little puzzling problem. All the clocks were printed at the same time same pla material. All the bobs have full amount of pennies. Clean the bearings very well as always. Have a very long pendulum swing test to check the bearings. Checked all the gears for any friction, made sure there was a tad of play between gears and arbors to be sure nothing was pinched tight in the frame. But 2 of the clocks are running slow. No matter how high or low I have the Bob. Also no effect with or without pennies. Still runs slow. I had then run since yesterday afternoon and this morning they were off by almost 40 minutes slow. The other clock is fine. Not sure what else to try.....

5 comments

5 Comments

kicksnj2

It was the spring..... I'm curious Steve, what is the accuracy of the Deadbeat clock? I've been adjusting since yesterday every few hours the closest I've gotten so far is about 14 seconds. Sometimes 14 fast I'll give a few hairs twist of the nut and I'm then be going 8 to 10 seconds slow.

frank.dirksen

Hello,

if your clocks a 40 minutes slow in, lets say, 12 hours, you have an immense error of arount 5%.

It is (40 minutes / 720 minutes) * 100%, am I right?.

That is so much, that you should be able to verify that with a stopwatch. Take the time for 100 pendulum swings of the correct watch and compare it to the others.

However, it don't think, the pendulum is the cause, the swingtime is just physics.

Maybe, there is some slipping internally? I'd check the friction clutch.

Good luck, Frank

Steve

Replying to

Great advice Frank. I was just about to suggest the same thing. These clocks have a second hand so it is really easy to test if the pendulum is running 5% slow.

The friction clutch needs to have enough pressure against the gears to overcome the hour hand gear train friction. Two possible friction sources would be the hour hand not rotating easily where it passes through the frame, or the hour hand being pressed against the front frame because there is not enough end shake.

kicksnj2

Replying to

Ok 100 swings comes in 45.3 secs. on the clock that's right on time. The one that's slow is coming in at about 43.1 secs. I'm going to change out the springs. I can't remember when I first built this clock last year.....I had problems with the springs being too tight. I'll see if that helps.

kicksnj2

Replying to

It might be the spring. If I remember the first time build last year I had very strong springs. What AliExpress called a pen spring was NOT a pen spring lol...