Moon Phase Clock

All the recent clock making activity got me going on a Moon Phase Clock. As usual, it is one of the clocks from Steve's Clocks. His files are always good and he has put a lot of time into refining them so they are very reliable.

I have the frame done and am starting on the gears now. The clock is currently at the 19" tall mark.

Cheers

That was fast! Your printer must be smoking!  Looks like that design uses ball bearing races on the shafts. Are the shafts themselves  printed or metal?

There are three printers going full bore so the frame doesn't take long. The gears will be done on only one so all the parameters will be the same.

Yes, all ball bearings and metal axles, except for the large bearings you can see, and they are for the winding mechanism that is printed. The bearings there are not required but just help the winding go smoother.



Tom

Interesting!

I just finished a Steve Peterson Moon Phase clock today.

Gene

That is a good looking clock Gene. Is that the original, large one or the revised smaller one?

That is a small weight shell as well ... how much weight?



Tom

That is SP14, the revised large one. It has the new style gears.

I used the nominal 3 inch diameter weight shell, filled with BBs. About 7.5 pounds.

Clock runs, but still needs a bit of cleanup in a few places where there was some sort of printing booger that I did not catch.

These are nice designs.

I built the smaller SP13 a while back, and it runs very well. I can tune it to about 1 minute per week without trying very hard.

It appears you are currently building the SP15. Initial frame parts look great!

Gene

Yes, it is the SP15 I am doing now. It might do a trial run next week sometime.

I have an original SP4 (now SP4b) that has been running for over 2 years and is usually accurate to within a couple of minutes a month. It tends to become a bit unstable when the weather or humidity changes rapidly. It runs on 8lbs of weight.

I am also working on an SP5b and am going for the 20 day option on that one.

Steve does have very nice files that print easily.

Cheers

That's a great looking clock, Gene!  Great job on the print.

You guys are getting me interested in making another clock.  About two years ago I printed a Coup Perdu (SP8) clock.  It worked fine for almost a year, but one problem with that clock is that the reed switch can become fused and the rewinding motor will stay on which happened to mine. The motor/gear reduction unit still seems fine after popping a gear out of the clock, but I think one of the metal rods got bent slightly as the clock will stop sometime during the day.  Of course, I could fix it but I lost interest.

I would like to have one working 3D printed clock as a point of pride so maybe I'll give the moon clock a shot.  I see Steve updated the larger model with the newer gears which work better with today's slicer algorithms.

Quote from: KryptoThat's a great looking clock, Gene!  Great job on the print.

I would like to have one working 3D printed clock as a point of pride so maybe I'll give the moon clock a shot.  I see Steve updated the larger model with the newer gears which work better with today's slicer algorithms.

Yes, it is nice to have at least one that just keeps on ticking!  I have shown mine to quite a few people and they have a hard time relating a plastic clock to an accurate, long lasting clock.



Tom

Slight update on my end, in my last post I was complaining about my Coup Perdu (SP8) clock not working correctly after the reed switch replacement.  Well, perhaps it needed a bit more dust in the gears as it's been working fine now for the last two weeks. Already got started on printing the SP14 Moon Clock anyway.  For those interested, here's a link to the page on Steve's website:

https://www.stevesclocks.com/sp14

The Assembly Notes (instructions) are a free download if you are curious.

I got the bigger clock but I'm starting to wonder if that was a good idea as it really is quite big.  The old Ender 3 has been working night and day for awhile now but still have plenty more parts to print.