I'm starting out.. need some help

[AntW]

I must have gonna it in my head that small laths or call jewelers lathe even if it's for clocks... o well lol
well I can use the HAAS and Hardine mills/lathes at school and work... but some of the small parts will be hard to make on them.. Spring barrel I can already tell will be hard to make.. I hope the the HAAS lathe with the Live tooling at college is working.. if it's not working then pinions and spring barrel will be a pain... and right now I dont have money or the space (I hate apartments) for a lathe... Note to self... Must find away around this...
for the Gears I can make a jig to make all the gears at once or at less must at once..

[AntW]

Now I remember when I was in College we had a.... grr cant think of the name... anyway.. we had a thing we can hock up to a cnc mill to drill cross hole or cut slots in round stock.. I'll have to get a hold of a teacher there an see how big of a round stock I can hold..

[Rob P.]

I must have gonna it in my head that small laths or call jewelers lathe even if it's for clocks... o well lol
well I can use the HAAS and Hardine mills/lathes at school and work... but some of the small parts will be hard to make on them.. Spring barrel I can already tell will be hard to make.. I hope the the HAAS lathe with the Live tooling at college is working.. if it's not working then pinions and spring barrel will be a pain... and right now I dont have money or the space (I hate apartments) for a lathe... Note to self... Must find away around this...
for the Gears I can make a jig to make all the gears at once or at less must at once..

You don't need a lot of space for a small engine lathe. The Sherline or Taig will fit in a space no larger than your desk at school. Even the 7X10/12/14 chinese lathes will fit in a sewing machine sized area. It's just the mess they can make that's the problem (do NOT get metal shavings in your carpeting) so you have to put them someplace where cleanup isn't so difficult and use as much shielding as you can.

Now I remember when I was in College we had a.... grr cant think of the name... anyway.. we had a thing we can hock up to a cnc mill to drill cross hole or cut slots in round stock.. I'll have to get a hold of a teacher there an see how big of a round stock I can hold..

V-blocks? Or maybe some sort of centering fixture?

[AntW]

No it was something like a NC rotary table.. just cant think of the name

[tok-tokkie]

You say it will be difficult making the smaller parts on a Haas. I have a Haas VF2 machining center. I am making a pendulum clock. The design is my own & has required a lot of reworking. All the gears have been cut using a 1mm tungsten carbide slot drill running round the profile of the gear. Gears are brass or silver steel (= drill steel in US?). For thick gears I laminate several thinner ones together - why there were the extra holes om the early involute gear on the right of the picture; fit 3mm drills through to get the laminates into register. Cycloidal gear on left. lantern ring with rotating trundles in center.


Here is a video of it with a can of water as the adjustable drive weight on a temporary industrial chain drive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuIZe-7dcRs

[AntW]

In away yes it will.. The Haas CNC machine at school dont have LIVE Tooling.. A because it's at a College I will not always have the time do a lot of set ups.. The lathes have also be cashed a few times and will be of center some.. T
so I'm goin to use the Tool room lathe.. And it's just set up to turn and thread..

[AntW]

On top of that all the lathe (not countin to tool room lathe) dont of chucks. They have collets and nothin bigger then 1". The manual lathe at school.. Let just say they my have 4jaw chuck but they suck.. Forget making at good on they.. Lucky a guy at work goin help me make some the stuff on a lathe.. So i good there.. Just a few more things i still got to work out on how to much

[AntW]

the thing that suck the most is... that I'll have to run most of the stuff at the College.. The students of right to machine 1st so I may have time to run here and there.. I'll have anywhere from 1-4 hours of time to setup/run time. So I'll have to make sure everthing is a quick and simply setup as I can make it be.. If I can't run and I get a student to.. it's got to be the samething. Students get to make everthing for free.. scrap as much as it takes to get it right.. but me.. I aint that lucky.. I got to make everthing in one shot or find scrap metal to run a test lol. I'm so glad I gave myself a year timeline to read,plan,buy, and etc..

[Tunderer]

Start simple. Start cheap. Find a set of plans for a simple weight driven time only clock for a start.

Draw it out accurately in your cad program. Keep in mind that a clock needs real clearances to work. You don't want to make the typical student line-on-line mistake. Don't assume that just because you have a CNC the parts will come out exact or work correctly the first time. If you are not aquainted with tool deflection you will be on this project. Unless the CNC you have is dead accurate,no backlash, no spindle or tool holder run out, you will break a lot of very small expensive end mills learning how to cut fine tooth gears in profile. You will need leaded hard or half-hard 353 engravers brass or similar for the gears. The lead content is needed to be able to cut fine details cleanly. Use anything else you will be fighting the alloy. Profile cutting a pinion from drill rod with an endmill will drive you nuts. Make pinions from a free machining steel like 12L14 or one of the other free cutting leaded steels. It will be more then good enough for learning. You do not need super hardened gears in the first clock. Consider lantern pinions as they may be easier to build then cutting solid pinions. You may find it is a lot easier to cut the gears with a fly cutter and a rotary index setup. Yes the CNC could run the flycutter. A 4th-axis rotary table could do the indexing assuming it has no backlash. Consider other metals for structural parts. Aluminum or steel is a lot cheaper for plates and bridges. You can easily machine brass bushing for the pivot holes.

JM Huckabee's book "How to Build a Regulator Clock" uses aluminum plates.

For a simple spring driven time only clock check out Steven Conover's "Building an American Clock Movement". The book also has a simple indexing tool plan included. There is also a chapter on making fly cutters for gear cutting.

John Wilding clock designs are sound. His books are well detailed but expensive to buy new as they come from England. If you are a member of NAWCC you can borrow his books from the library.
Best of luck, T

[AntW]

A rotary index!! that's what I was trying to remember lol... The CNC I can use run well and I've ran gears on a mills before.. Pinions now that is something goin to be hard. Maintaining wheel and Barrel Ratchet.. I've never cut teeth like that..
The College has a Rotary index for one of the CNC mills.. I hope it work. If it doesn't then making a Spring Barrel goin hurt lol.
yea I'm goin to make my first clock as cheap as I can.. It may sound mean but I dont care if it works (dont get me wrong it will be great if it works, but I can't get my hopes up on the 1st clock). After that every Clock I try and make I'll do my best to make it work.

Allen Wolff sent me a book of a his clock he made. I'm goin try and make it.

I'm goin to have an buy some tooling I can already tell. Good thing about working in a Machine shop is I can buy the Metal and Tools and the Shop will take a small amount of money form me untill it's all paid off.

Also thank you for the books titles..

I a project I made when I was in College I'll have to get it an take a Pic.. hopefully lol

[Eckmill]

AntW. I don't think anyone has suggested the final chapter in Ward Goodrich's "The Modern Clock." It is a 1905 compilation of clock articles from, I believe, "The American Horologist and Jeweler" published by again, I think Hazlett & Walker. The book is available as an eBook http://archive.org/details/modernclockstudy00good and it won't cost you a cent. Paperback reprints are about $25.

I believe that this book is every bit as good as any 21st Century text although some of the writing is clearly archaic. The final chapter describes how a jeweler can make his own weight driven regulator clock.

It, the book, is in addition a valuable reference.

[jhe.1973]

Hi Everyone,

Although I agree completely that, “The Modern Clock is a valuable reference, a reader today has the advantage of more information being available than what existed in 1905.

A few specifics come to mind.

I wouldn’t recommend filling a regulator case with hydrogen gas even though Goodrich gives advice as to where to find instructions to make the hydrogen.

At least when he admits, “The practical details of filling a clock case with hydrogen gas I have not yet worked out” he also says, “No burning light or electric spark must be put into the case while filling, because the mixture of hydrogen with air is very explosive when ignited.”

In 1905 the Hidenburg disaster was still decades away so the thought of having a bomb hanging on the wall disguised as a regulator probably wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

Another safety detail to consider is the advice on mixing the chemicals to silver a dial. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to dilute the solution until, “no trace of salt or acid can be perceived by the taste”.

In 1905 these ideas/actions were understandable and illustrate a fairly common innocence, about various dangers, that exists until things have been tried/tested, usually over time. I’m reminded of my Dad telling me that, to do his own case hardening, he used to but cyanide eggs at the drugstore.

The only outright mistake I ever found in The Modern Clock was when I followed Goodrich’s instructions to lay out the pinwheel escapement on my prototype regulator. For those interested, I describe this mistake here in post #8:

http://mb.nawcc.org/showthread.php?7...sion-regulator

I am bringing this up again because Goodrich makes the same mistake with the layout of the Graham deadbeat escapement. Following his advice results in half the pendulum swing than what is claimed.

To quote myself from the above page:

“Let me make something clear here. I still highly recommend ‘The Modern Clock” for it’s wealth of information. It just shows that we all make mistakes and advice should be considered a guide, not the last word.”