HANGING GEAR CLOCK

Introduction: Hanging Gear Clock

By tdonocliftFollowMore by
the author:

About: Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. More About tdonoclift
»

Gears never fail to capture the interest of anyone observing

them. The inspiration for this clock was a minimalist approach to
a gear clock. By simply hanging an incremented gear onto a
small driven gear and letting gravity and mathematics do their
thing, an eye catching clock can be made.

This project is aided through the use of a CNC router, however,

it is possible to adapt these plans for use with other workshop
equipment. All plans provided can be printed at a 1:1 scale and
used as guides to help those who are not using computer
assisted machining.

This project also uses a micro-controller and stepper motors to

make the gears move and keep time. Detailed information
regarding wiring and coding is also included in this instructable,
but please comment if I've left anything out :)
Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload
Step 1: Materials
Bill of Materials -

The Wood Bits:

Lime wood/Basswood - Most of the clock is made from

lime wood, it's light, bright and easy to carve. I used two
thick pieces for the clock base and body, each is 29 mm
thick and 120 mm wide. the total length was close to 350
mm but was cut in two as shown in the picture.

A thinner piece of lime wood was used for the light

coloured gears, the original size was 15 mm thick by 150 x
150 mm.

Walnut - I used walnut for the larger gear and the front
insert used to cover the motors. The only piece I could find
was a 45 x 45 mm spindle blank which I sliced up and
made into a board measuring 180 x 220 x 13 mm. If you
can find a board close to these dimensions, you'll save
yourself a task :)

Ply Wood - An A4 sheet of 3 mm ply was used as an

access panel for the base unit of the clock.

The Electronic Bits:

Arduino Nano - I actually used a clone board based on the

Arduino Nano. The board I used was the Cylewet CH340G
5V 16M Micro-controller board. It works just the same as
the Arduino but costs a lot less.
 Stepper Motors - The steppers I used are Elegoo BYJ48
5V steppers.

Stepper Drivers - The boards that drive the stepper

motors are ULN2003 drivers and are usually supplied with
the motors.

Power - You will also need a 5V DC mains adapter, and a

barrel jack adapter of appropriate size.

Wires - You can get away with using jumper wires but if
you have some soldering skill, this would be better.
Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload
Step 2: Cutting the Parts

2 More Images

The clock is made from 8 parts in total, this includes 4 gears, a

body, a base, an insert (motor cover), and an access panel. The
Vector files for all these parts are provided below and are 1:1
scale. If you're using a CNC machine, I'll presume you have
your preferred method for operation and so I'll keep it brief. For
anyone not using CNC, you can print out the svg files and glue
them to your work pieces to use as a guide.

The Body -

The first part I cut was the body. This was cut from 29mm
thick lime wood using a 6 mm 4 flute straight cut tool. Using
the svg file I have provided below, I used makercam.com to
generate the g-code for free. The body consists of a number
 of pockets which house the stepper motors and provide a
channel for the wires. As the wires for the top stepper have to
go behind the lower stepper, there is an extra deep section of
channel to allow this. The diagram above shows the depths of
each area.

The Gears -

For the gears, I used a much thinner 1.5 mm cutting tool to

give better definition to the gear teeth. The thinner tool can
also be used for carving numbers by using the "follow path"
operation in makercam. I cut the large hour gear from walnut
and the smaller gears from lime wood. (I also cut a a few
small gears from the walnut so I'd have a choice of colours).

The Base -

This was also made from 29 mm thick lime wood using the 6
mm straight cutter. I made a box by pocketing out most of the
material, leaving a lip and corners for screws. This allows me
to attach the access panel later. You could also make a base
box by any method you like, just be sure it has a hole to allow
you to connect the body.

Access Panel -

This is just a rectangle of plywood :)

Attachments

 Body.svg

Download
 Gears.svg

Download

 Insert.svg

Download

 Base.svg

Download

Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload

Step 3: Fit the Steppers

The stepper motors come with some screw attachments that I

had to remove. I found the best way to remove them was to use
bolt cutters, but they could easily be removed a number of other
ways. I also gave them a little bit of a clean up with a file to
neaten the cut.

Next, make sure the steppers fit into the body, be sure to feed
the wires of the top stepper behind the lower stepper as shown
in the photo.

After checking the fit, it's a good idea to remove the steppers
and then sand the front of the body now. Once the steppers
are fixed in place, sanding will be tricky. The walnut insert
needs to be sanded flush with the body, now is the time to
make sure it sits flush and looks neat.
Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload
 Step 4: Electronics and Code

An unfortunate flaw in the design of this clock is the inability to

access the stepper motors once the insert has been glued in
place. For this reason, it is recommended to test your
motors before you realise one of them is broken!

The photo above shows the testing of the circuit, but a clearer
description is shown in the diagram.

The Nano micro-controller works exactly the same as an

Arduino Nano. You need to connect it to a computer via a USB
cable and have the Arduino IDE installed. You may also need to
install the drivers for the micro-controller, however, newer
versions of the Arduino IDE may already come with the driver
installed. If you find you need the driver, it can easily be found
on Google by searching for "CH340G drivers".

Be sure to select the correct COM port, board type (Arduino

Nano) and processor type (ATmega238P). You should now be
able to Upload the code provided below.

This is the code that runs the clock, for testing purposes you
may want to change some of the numbers to see more
noticeable changes, otherwise you'll be looking for small
movements every 20 seconds or so :)

I'll talk more about how the code works later in this instructable.
Attachments
 gearclock2.ino

Download

Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload

Step 5: Body Assembly

Now we can be sure our steppers are not duds, it's time to fix
them into position.

I used a standard grip clamp to press the small gears onto the
stepper shaft. Take note of the walnut insert in place between
the gear and stepper. The gear is a tight fit and once it is
pressed on, you will have a hard time getting it off again, so
make sure the walnut insert is already in place.

Now we can fit the steppers and walnut insert into the main
body and glue the insert in place. You can glue the steppers if
you like but don't use too much glue as there is already limited
space inside the body. I found they remained in position without
the need for glue.

Next, feed the stepper wires through the base hole and glue the
body to the base.

Make sure the body does not slope forward!

If the body is leaning forward, the gears will slowly work their
way off the driver gears and fall off the clock. Make sure the
body is upright or even leaning slightly back.
 Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload
Step 6: Finishing Touches

I gave the dial gears some paint to make the numbers stand
out. Just ordinary acrylic paint works well, and you don't even
have to be particularly neat either. Once the paint is dry, sand
off any paint that didn't make it into the carved numbers and
you'll be left with some neat looking numbers.

I drilled a 10 mm hole in the back of the base to allow the barrel

jack adapter to sit.

Lastly, I found some small screws which allowed me to attach

the boards to the inside of the base. The photo shows a slightly
different wiring configuration which is something I was
experimenting with; I would recommend sticking with the
original wiring shown in a previous step. I would also
recommend doing away with the jumper wires and having a go
at soldering the connections as this saves a lot of space. This is
something I will be doing next.
Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload
Step 7: Closing Remarks

Comments on the Code -

The core of the code was provided by Instructables user

curtis63 who posted it as a comment to Mohannad
Rawashdeh who made an excellent instructable on the
BYJ48 stepper motors.

The code keeps time by splitting an hour into 128 units, then
advancing each stepper by an appropriate number of steps,
after accounting for the time that motion takes, the code then
delays the rest of the 1/128 hour period. If that wasn't
complicated enough... Here comes the maths...

How the code keeps time:

The inner gear (minutes gear) has 28 teeth and the outer
gear (hour gear) has 52 teeth. Each of the driver gears have
8 teeth, giving gear ratios of 3.5 and 6.5 respectively. This
means the inner driver must turn 3.5 times each hour and the
outer gear must turn 6.5 times every 12 hours.

We know from the product specs that the BYJ48 steppers

have 4096 steps per rotation. So that's

3.5 x 4096 = 14336 steps every hour

6.5 x 4096 = 26624 steps every 12 hours

12 hours is 43,200,000 milliseconds (what the Arduino works

in) which when you divide down gives 1344 steps every
337500 milliseconds for the minutes stepper and 208 steps
every 337500 milliseconds for the hours stepper. As 1344
steps is almost a quarter of a rotation, and I wanted the
movements to be subtle, I divided that down again, this time
by 12 to give 112 steps every 28125 milliseconds.
Moving the motors takes time so this is accounted for by
putting a known delay in each step. The main loop is a for
loop that loops 12 times. Each loop moves the minutes
stepper by 112 steps (which takes 112 x 64 milliseconds)
then delays by 19917 milliseconds. The code then moves the
hours stepper by 208 steps taking 208 x 60 milliseconds. The
total number milliseconds is then:

(12 x 112 x 64)+(12 x 19917)+(208 x 60) = 337500

I'll admit it's not an ideal method as it assumes a single step

is instantaneous, which it isn't. I'd like to eventually
incorporate a real time clock (RTC) into this project to keep
accurate time and I'm open to any suggestions for
improvement.

Thank you

Thanks you for reading this instructable :D please leave a

comment or suggestion, I'm still working on this project and
I'd welcome any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, and
potential improvements.