GearHeads Corner

Hi,

My name is Mike, and I am new here. I have been a woodworker since I was a little boy (65 now) with my grandpa and dad. I bought a laser 6 years ago and a CNC router about a year ago. I have recently gotten this hair brained idea that I would like to build a wood clock, so here I am.

I bought Gearotic recently and what a work of art (no pun intended) that is! I am a retired network engineer and programmer so I know a bit about computers, and I am truly impressed with this program. That being said, I am really struggling.

I know it is recommended to search on my own, so if this post is out of line, then please just delete it. But I have been searching and watching hours of videos and I just can't seem to find some basic concepts.

That being said - here is where I am: I have successfully built a "ticker" that works. It is quite rudimentary, but that was my goal - to develop, test, and learn one system at a time. I can post a picture or video (my wife put a video on our FB page lol) if anyone is interested. It has 2 gears, an escapement, a weight, and a pendulum.. and it actually runs - woo hoo! I used unsealed bearings and 8mm brass tubes for the shafts and supports.

So here is where I'm stuck:

How do you physically build a ratchet so you can wind the weight back up? I have no trouble designing it in Gearotic, but I can't find a single example of how to physically build this in a mechanism.

Second - how do you get 2 or 3 shafts coming out of the same hole (for the hands of the clock)? Physically, how do you do that?

Third - can someone point me to the pendulum calculator? I saw a diagram once, but didn't think to save it (I can really be a bonehead sometimes). I just watched a video today that Art made that referenced a pendulum calculator in Geartic, but didn't say how/where it was. I found someone else that posted an excel spreadsheet, which was helpful, but I would really like either the diagram or a calculator in Gearotic. I have been searching for this for days!

Once again - I am stuck with the physical building of the components, not the design in Gearotic. I am actually doing pretty well with the program.

Thank you!! And again, if I am out of line and you want me to just keep searching, please do delete this and I will search on.

Mike

Hi Mike:

Sorry for the delay, I was away for a bit..

>>How do you physically build a ratchet so you can wind the weight back up? I have no trouble designing it in Gearotic, but I can't find a single example of how to physically build this in a mechanism.

Imagine you have a 6" gear on the screen. On this gears shaft and on a bearing the ratchet is mounted. The latch you see on the screen in the sim is attached to the gear itself. A drum is placed on the shaft and hard attached to the ratchet. When the ratchet turns, so does the drum. Sop now we turn the ratchet, ( with a handle or key,), the drum winds up the cord with a weight on it, if you stop turning, the ratchet tries to unwind, but cant because the latch engages, thus the gear must rotate to unwind, but not wind. That gear drives everything else..


Second - how do you get 2 or 3 shafts coming out of the same hole (for the hands of the clock)? Physically, how do you do that?

This is done with tubes that turn inside each other typically. Gears are attached to the shafts so each is turned by a different gear. Its a bit hard to picture, and generally, you dont want to do more than one inside another, certainly for a first clock.


Third - can someone point me to the pendulum calculator? I saw a diagram once, but didn't think to save it (I can really be a bonehead sometimes). I just watched a video today that Art made that referenced a pendulum calculator in Geartic, but didn't say how/where it was. I found someone else that posted an excel spreadsheet, which was helpful, but I would really like either the diagram or a calculator in Gearotic. I have been searching for this for days!

In the folder for Gearotic, is a program named Gearotic1.0.exe, run that and there is a pendulum calculator in it. That is the original version fo Gearotic. Once you place an escapement, you can then place a pendulum and the calculator opens.

Regards,
Art

NAWCC has a great pendulum calculator at https://theindex.nawcc.org/CalcPendulumLength.php

It allows you to enter the number of gear teeth between the minute hand and the escapement to determine the pendulum length.

Steve