Wood Gear Clocks

Hi Steve,

Now I have it complete I wanted to give you some feedback on a build variant of the SP6 Silent Desk Clock, the story being after building one of Clayton Boyer’s  wooden design back in December  I was eager to tackle another project  ideally a small form factor and the SP6 ticked many of the boxes.

The only downside being I really wanted a wooden implementation, did see on your site that it was on your to do list and yet to come. Having learned a lot from building Clayton’s clock I figured why not have a stab it. I must say at the outset it’s a great design and fair play to you for doing all the hard work on the coding and sussing out the new CNC V4 shield variant which for sure achieves such a smooth and silent result.

Let me give you…

I was anxious to keep making gears after completing Steve's SP14 clock. I'm considering building a wooden clock as well and thought I'd give the laser a try cutting out a gear. So I just found and downloaded the first free wood gear file I could find and ran it on 1/8" Birch Ply. Came out beautiful. Cut in only 3 minutes with a single pass. I think my laser will do just fine producing laser cut clock parts.

Steve, as you consider wood clock plans, pls keep in mind that some of us cut them with a laser printer/cutter. Thickness isn't usually an issue because it is easy enough to laminate thinner pieces. Similarly I cut and splice to create pieces otherwise too large for my printer. I've been using either baltic birch or hardwood veneer on mdf for my clocks, most of which are Clayton Boyer design.

Hi Steve,

The local filament supplier has discounts on their filaments and have been toying with the idea of buying some wood filament and printing the deadbeat version of your coup perdu using this wood filament.

Have you had any experience in using wood filament and would the frictional forces be too high for this clock.

I presume that unlike PLA I would probably need to sand/polish the gear teeth??

Any thoughts???

Cheers

A woodworking club near me held a project challenge to make something with a small amount of bamboo material that they provided. I decided to convert the 3D printed desk clock to wood. The wooden gears are super quiet compared to the printed version. The size is about 8" tall and 8" wide. Larger versions are being planned.

I am running low on the small circuit boards used to control the stepper motor in the clock. My goal is to have a new design with a real time clock added for the next order of boards. The RTC looks to be the easiest to integrate https://www.amazon.com/Sensors-Precision-DS3231-Arduino-Raspberry/dp/B08D11ZGMK and it uses a temperature compensated oscillator. I am still working on the algorithm. Hopefully it will be ready soon.