Category Archives: pendulum clock

Clock This! A 3D-Printed Escapement Mechanism

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Traditional mechanical clockmaking is an art that despite being almost the archetype of precision engineering skill, appears rarely in our world of hardware hackers. That’s because making a clock mechanism is hard, and it is for good reason that professional clockmakers serve a long apprenticeship to learn their craft.

Though crafting one by hand is no easy task, a clock escapement is a surprisingly simple mechanism. Simple enough in fact that one can be 3D-printed, and that is just what [j0z] has done with a model posted on Thingiverse.

The model is simply the escapement mechanism, so to make …read more

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Retrotechtacular: The Best Pendulum Clock

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Would you believe a pendulum clock that can keep time accurately to within one second per year? If you answered “yes”, you’ve either never tried to regulate a pendulum clock yourself, or you already know about the Shortt Clock. Getting an electromechanical device to behave so well, ticking accurately to within 0.03 parts per million, is no mean feat, and the Shortt clock was the first timekeeping device that actually behaves more regularly than the Earth itself.

[Matt Little] passed us this link to an interesting technical writeup (PDF) of the clock. The trick behind the most accurate pendulum clock …read more

Continue reading Retrotechtacular: The Best Pendulum Clock→

Retrotechtacular: The Best Pendulum Clock

Posted on by

Would you believe a pendulum clock that can keep time accurately to within one second per year? If you answered “yes”, you’ve either never tried to regulate a pendulum clock yourself, or you already know about the Shortt Clock. Getting an electromechanical device to behave so well, ticking accurately to within 0.03 parts per million, is no mean feat, and the Shortt clock was the first timekeeping device that actually behaves more regularly than the Earth itself.

[Matt Little] passed us this link to an interesting technical writeup (PDF) of the clock. The trick behind the most accurate pendulum clock …read more

Continue reading Retrotechtacular: The Best Pendulum Clock→