I am pretty fascinated with wooden gear clocks. Does anyone have experience in cutting and making any kind of visible gear clock?
I have seen Clayton Boyer’s designs Wooden Gear Clock Plans by Clayton Boyer which are pretty incredible. Also have found wooden gear clocks https://wooden-gear-clocks.com website, also good.
Just curious who has made one, tips and tricks, what design did you use, make your own design…??
Bill
I’ve built many of Clayton’s clocks over the years, and I highly recommend them. The plans and instructions are clear and Clayton is very generous with his advice. His “Genesis” or “Simplicity” designs are a great place to start. I would also highly recommend his “Practical Guide” book before starting your project. After digesting that, and building one or two clocks, you’ll be ready to strike out with your own unique design. The last two clocks I built were on a CNC machine, and worked out OK, but the Onefinity should give a much higher level of precision, which is why I bought one. I’m currently starting a modified version of Clayton’s “Marble Strike”, which should be a worthy challenge. If you decide to go ahead, feel free to reach out, I’ll be more than happy to help.
Thank you! Appreciate the words and invitation for help! Looking forward to it
I received my plans for the Simplicity clock in DXF and pdf format. I am excited to get stated and set things up to begin cutting on the my onefinity wood worker. When I began to look at the DXF files there are hundreds of lines in the gears and hands and and misc. parts that do not join. Therefore I can’t create contour post processing profiles without fixing them. Way too much work. Clayton acknowledges this fact and suggest to use Vectric aspire “Join gaps feature”. As I use Fusion 360 this doesn’t exist. since you have built your last two clocks via CNC machines did you run into this and how did you fix it.
Richard, I’ve built many of Clayton’s clocks for myself and for clients using Vectric VCarve Desktop. My most recent is the “NuLuna” which is probably about his most complicated design, and it went well.
You most certainly don’t need Aspire. Just for giggles, I downloaded Vectric’s “Cut 2D program” demo and loaded one of Clayton’s DXF files; it works just fine, and It’s a lot cheaper ($149.00).
Granted, some massaging is required. Use the “Join Vectors” tool and fiddle with the gap threshold. (Mine’s set to 0.1" and I haven’t needed to change it.) Node editing will fix the few gaps that are left open. I also recommend the use of the “Curve Fit” tool; your CNC will be much happier with 90% of the nodes removed (a typical result on one of the gears.) Once you’re used to the editing, it goes very quickly.
Another simplification: Clayton’s DXF files import with many, many layers. The first thing I do in VCarve is to select everything and dump it into one layer, and go from there.
I’ve never used Fusion of any sort, but it’s hard to imagine a CAD program that doesn’t allow you to join gaps or edit nodes.
It’s been my experience that just about any design file one purchases online suffers from the same defects, and most of them require massaging to execute well on my CNC.
In my opinion, there is nothing quite so satisfying as watching your clock start to run for the first time. I hope you’ll stick with it.
Feel free to DM me at any time. I’ll be happy to provide any advice I can.
~Mike
It’s been awhile since I’ve used F360 but when I did I recall there’s an add-on to do join vectors. I don’t recall if I got it off Autodesk or if it was a 3rd party but a quick Google search or a question in the Fusion forum should get you pointed in the right direction. As I recall it was free.
Thank you so much for the suggestions sir. I haven’t tried Vectric products before but this feature sounds a lot like exactly what I am looking for. The clock project at first seems overwhelming and the drawings confusing. I’ll take it step by step and hopefully it becomes more user friendly. I’m sure there will many mistakes. it’s the beginning of new journey. I think the micro tolerances for for fit and finish will be challenging and sourcing some material too. Amazon is just a click away. Would enjoy seeing some of your work. Thanks again Retired sailor.
I had seen the Fusion360 add-in “fill Gap” but forgotten about it. Revisiting the sight found it was free and it downloaded. upon activating it. It required a license and redirected me. Only 10$ and what the heck, worth a try. a few minutes later and a couple of tries 90% of the gaps were fixed (which were hundreds) and was able to extrude all parts to proper tool paths. The remaining 10% were the most important though, the Gears of the project, turns out fusion 360 has a gear add-in and with careful measurement with calipers I think I can extrapolate the information from the as-built plans and duplicate the bodies for tool paths. Appreciate your input. Very good tip!
Be careful with the gears! If you’re going to re-engineer them, you should cut a couple of test samples and mount them per the plan spacing to make sure the “depthing” (smooth meshing) works, before cutting the whole set with your new method.
Does Fusion offer curve smoothing or node editing? As I mentioned before, it’s pretty critical to reduce the number of nodes. My machine actually stuttered and wrecked a gear because of this. Perhaps the Fusion gizmo you mentioned will handle this.
Here’s pictures of some of my clocks. All of these were made from Clayton’s DXF files with VCarve on my OneFinity, which until recently was a Machinist, 16 x 16 inches. I hope they encourage you to press on! I’d love to see a “Wooden Clock” category here!
This is “NuLuna”. It’s predicting an actual lunar eclipse that happened a while back:
This is a “Genesis” I built for a client. It’s a great starter clock
“Toucan” is a nice tabletop clock, smaller than usual.
This is “Journey”. I only run this one on request, it’s noisy as heck!
There are many more, but you get the idea!
Very good advice to cut test pieces set on specified dimensions to check back lash and freedom of movement. Am currently working on a jig to use for the sanding wheel for smoothing and trueing the circles. Yes Fusion 360 has features for Smoothing in the manufacture tab for making tool paths and post. Had not considered this but will set this feature on. the simulate cutting feature also will show warnings for excessive nodes still something to watch for in test cuts.
Richard, I think you’ll find that backlash is not a big problem, because your clock only runs one direction. “Depthing”, making your gears run smoothly, is your key goal. Once your going gear train is mounted on its frame, you should be able to make them rotate by blowing on the teeth of the first gear in the train. I didn’t believe it either, until I tried it. Amazing!
A jig for sanding gears into roundness is definitely a good thing to have. My first clocks were cut out with my trusty old DeWalt scroll saw, and I used my jig constantly. Once I started cutting gears with my CNC, I found that I didn’t need it for roundness, but it’s always good to check. It’s great for tweaking depthing. Here’s a pic of the jig I made. A knob underneath secures the slide at the right distance.
On that same topic, another key to a smooth runner is to balance all of your gears, especially those closest to the escapement. I was going to build a jig to do this, but then I found a propellor balancer used by model airplane enthusiasts. There are a lot of them for cheap on EBay. Get one with plenty of clearance for your larger gears.
Using a quarter-inch Forstner bit, I drill holes partway through the gear from its back until the gear will balance in any position.
Consider using ball bearings for the gear shaft that carries your drive weight. I’ve found this makes quite a difference. Your goal is to make the clock run with a minimum weight. If the pendulum runs on a shaft, that’s another good place for the bearings.
If you get it right, you can use doubling pulleys (use ball bearings again) on your weight, which will double your run time between rewinding the weight. You can see those and a lot of other good ideas on Clayton’s Flickr page, linked from his website.
A minor correction: In the pic above, my NuLuna is predicting a solar, not a lunar eclipse. This was an actual event in the southern hemisphere, and it was a thrill to get an accurate prediction from a clock I made!
I hope this helps!
