Clock used to run reliable, but no more
Hi Steve! First of all, thank you very much for these clocks! They are amazing!
I printed and assembled a SPB5 with the 15 day option. After a bit of tuning and reducing friction using your awesome debug hints I got it to work reliably. I went on vacation and even after a week it was still ticking just fine.
Then I decided to take off the weight shell (for an inspection) and put it back on. I didn't change anything else. Ever since then the clock is not running reliably anymore. It runs for a few hours at most, sometimes maybe just for a few minutes. The pendulum amplitude gets smaller and smaller till it completely stops. (I can restart it very easily though with just a gentle push of the pendulum)
Since then I tested the gears in isolation (without the pallet) and the weight (of ~6kg) drives the gears nicely. I can stop the escapement with my finger at any position and it nicely resumes spinning.
I also re-did the pendulum free swing test and I get about 12 mins of swinging before the amplitude gets too tiny. I assume this is fine too, right?
But when i put the two together, it doesn't run for long anymore. I am now playing around for a few days with a) alignment of the clock on the wall and b) the angle of the pallet against the escapement (by adjusting the two thumb screws); but even when the beat sounds even to me, I cannot seem to get it back to work reliably.
Do you have any tipps for me on what else I should check?
Many thanks in advance,
Andreas
So now the clock works and i don't know exactly why. But it has been working reliably for a few weeks now. My kids kept restarting it and eventually it just kept going. I don't know for sure what the problem was. One hypothesis would be that the finishing line was not wound up well. But it is just a hypothesis. In any case now it works and after some adventures with a broken printer I am trying to print a second one now.
Thanks again for your support and for this awesome design!
Andreas