Clocks of The Pistons

Objectives

The objectives of the individual clock projects are to develop basic individual engineering skills that will be used throughout the design and analysis of kinetic sculptures. In the clock projects our team has learned how to use AutoCAD, Inventor and/or Fusion for graphic design and analysis. The actual fabrication of the pendulum clocks gave an introduction to shop fabrication and rapid prototyping (Lasercamm, 3D printing) skills. The different analytical predictions of dynamic oscillation motion via point-mass analysis, inertial analysis and Working Model 2D simulations provided a good way to validate the experimental measurements of the clock oscillation time. In the end, we all ended up with working desktop models!