Laura's Lovely Clock Page

Objectives

The purpose of this clock project was to create clock-pendulum made up of various fabricated parts as well as two major pieces: the pendulum and the escapement wheel. These two parts were designed on Fusion and then cut out of a 6x12in piece of yellow acrylic using a LaserCAMM. The rest of the clock-pendulum parts were fabricated in a design studio using various machines such as drills and presses. More details on the clock-pendulum project can be found on Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures.

Laura's Copy of Timing Template

Outcomes

My calculated period (0.65 seconds) and frequency (1.539 Hz) were fairly accurate to the actual period (0.64 seconds) and frequency (1.563 Hz) values, with a calculated error of %1.56. Through the process of creating the pendulum, I faced a couple of challenges.When assembling the parts of my clock, I struggled with press fitting the short bearing into my pendulum. My pendulum recieved a small crack during the pressing likely due to the thin nature of my pendulum in the pivot area. Even though my pendulum cracked, because the crack was so small I didn't need to replace my pendulum with a new one and was able to still use the old one. Another struggle I faced was designing my pendulum with the wrong dimensions. Initially I made my chick too short. In order to fix it, I had to completely redesign my chick and make it bigger and longer. Despite the challanges I faced, I successfully completed my clock project.

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