Clocks
Clocks
(OP)
I had a faux regulator clock hanging on my kitchen wall and it fell to the floor a couple of days ago when I was adjusting the time for the end of DST (yes, I was a bit behind on this). The clock is nothing special: quartz movement, MDF construction for the housing, etc. I am thinking about replacing it instead of cobbling it back together and wanted suggestions on what sort of wall clock might be appropriate for an engineer. I like the railroad style regulator clocks but am not limiting myself to that style.





RE: Clocks
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Clocks
That being said, we also have a very nice schoolhouse regulator in the formal living room which I have to wind every 30 days.
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Clocks
Given my history with utility's I would love to find a Warren Master B.
http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2600M/lots/321
When I saw the title, I was hoping you were announcing your hobby of clock repair. I need someone to put back together a 1934 Ingrahm mantle that the local "repair expert" handed back to me in a paper sack :(
RE: Clocks
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=gravity+clock&...
RE: Clocks
My "Altimeter Clock" below, while not a nice antique or particularly fancy... reflects above thought to me and memories of an older brother's early 50's era aviation and training at a small, one man A & E mechanic run local air field... as a young kid I got tag along to the air field to see, crawl thru many an aircraft undergoing engine overhauls, chromealloy frame repair, fabric and paintwork.. nearly impossible education opportunity for kids today. As for my brother, he went on to become a Navy carrier pilot ... F8 Crusader..
RE: Clocks
Another childhood memory.. I was given the Ingraham clock below by a neighbor who said it had not run in over the 30 years they had it.. I think I was around 13 years old at the time....and I fixed it.. The mainspring winding ratchet was of a design where the ratchet could get flipped 180 degrees out of position so it was impossible to wind the mainspring. Flipped it into the correct position and ran great. Still runs....
The 1833 date at the top of the label is now almost unreadable.. I think that is the patent date. It was quite clear when I got the clock now close to 60 years ago.
RE: Clocks
Think you could do that again? Mine
iswas a similar ebony box.RE: Clocks
Designing and building a mechanical clock is on my to-do list. This is well into the future at the moment.
--
JHG
RE: Clocks
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Clocks
Despite all that, and my having done very little more than replacing the cords on the weights, blown odd bits of dust off the escapement wheel and wound it once a week (always waiting for it to stop, then winding a whole number of turns - there still being no click springs), it still keeps time to within a minute or two a week and fills the study with a soothing, subdued tick.
A.
RE: Clocks
There are several popular (and profitable for the business minded) ways to make a wall clock with an aviation theme, like the re-purposed altimeter above.
You mount a clock in the center hub of a wooden propeller (takes a lot of wall space!) or a clock inset in the turbine rotor of a time-expired jet engine, for just 2 examples.
If you're a sparky, there seems to be a way to convert old analog meters into clocks, provided you could put in a 12-hour scale on the face, and drive the needle with a count/voltage proportional signal. Reset at noon/midnight and the needle drops back to zero!
Yeah - something like this:
RE: Clocks
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
RE: Clocks
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
RE: Clocks
Think you could do that again? Mine it was a similar ebony box.
I would be concerned with the possibility of missing parts, if someone has disassembled it.. perhaps someone like at the link below who has the ability to replace or repair parts might be your best bet.. http://www.midcoastclock.com/ingraham-clock-repair...
If your movement is as below, if it would help I would be willing to pull out the movement in mine and take some more detailed photographs
This same neighbor also gave me a small wind up alarm clock that "he tried to fix" and he took the wrong 4 nuts holding the movement together and it flew into a gazillion pieces. I put that one back together. The big challenge was the main and alarm springs.. I had to wind them up fully and then take a needle and thread and "sew" the springs with enough thread to keep them wound tight and then cut the threads out after it was put back together. It was quite a challenge to get all the gears in place, including the springs and bring the main plates together. I would imagine clock makers such as above have some tricks to do this...
RE: Clocks
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Clocks
GG
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
RE: Clocks
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Clocks
RE: Clocks
RE: Clocks
RE: Clocks
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]
RE: Clocks
several years back I read an article where they were going to stop because generation for makeup over frequency was not benificail to grid reialibilty (and of course the cost)
RE: Clocks
Not the mosquito coast, but the Moskito coast, the home of the Moskito Indians.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Clocks
ERCOT still does time correction.
RE: Clocks
A true engineer's clock... especially if you've heard the story of Laurens Hammond.
Having a fondness for Hammond B3 organs (from the '60s rock music) I was blown away when I discovered the story of Laurens Hammond and his development work on the synchronous clock (which I remember from childhood)....to not only become the Hammond Clock Company, but also further work by Laurens led to development of the Hammond organ.. with a mechanical tone generator system using a synchronous motor to drive 91 to 96 tone generators (essentially synchronous motors with the armature driven, and the stator coil the tone output). To start a Hammond organ there is a spring return start switch and a separate run switch. The synchronous drive motor will not start itself as so with the synchronous clocks of the era, so a separate motor (looks like a shaded pole motor) is used to spin the system up and then the synchronous drive motor takes over.
The synchronous motor that can keep accurate time, can make a musical tone that never needed tuning Laurens Hammond
This video does a pretty good job putting the story together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBjp2ZDA8A0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_Clock_Compan...
quote: In 1928, Hammond founded the Hammond Clock Company, after designing a synchronous clock motor that was inspired by Henry Warren's Telechrons, but was not self-starting. These clocks were still popular in Britain in the 1960s, because they would not display a false time. (If a transient power failure occurs, a self-starting clock will afterwards restart and display an incorrect time.) The British generating stations also corrected the number of cycles at the end of the day so that Hammond clocks would be accurate.[clarification needed] Hammond's clock business ran into difficulties in the early 1930s, and he struggled to save it with a number of other inventions, such as an electric bridge table and, slightly later, his famous organ.
In 1933, he bought a used piano, and proceeded to discard everything apart from the keyboard action. Using the keyboard as a controller, he was able to experiment with various sound-generating methods until he found the best one—the tonewheel generator.... Thanks to Hammond's prior manufacturing and engineering experience, the tonewheel generator was extremely well-engineered by the time the organ finally went into production.The number of tonewheel organs still in regular use in the twenty-first century is a testament to the quality of the design and execution of the product.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_organ
RE: Clocks
He had three clocks, one in the house, one in the shop, and one in an out building. He had salvaged them from an old school. The ones in the shop and building were slaves to the one in the house. The three would always have the same exact time.
I wish that I could find a set of those today.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Clocks
----------------------------------------
The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Clocks
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
Ben Loosli
RE: Clocks
----------------------------------------
The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Clocks
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Clocks
-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)
RE: Clocks
Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: Clocks
----------------------------------------
The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Clocks
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Clocks
(I also have one of those crazy binary clocks in my office - endlessly curious to those that don't understand it!)
f-d
ípapß gordo ainÆt no madre flaca!
RE: Clocks
----------------------------------------
The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Clocks
Too bad they are 32-spoke wheels. 24 or 36 spoke wheels would make it easy to space out the hour numbers.
RE: Clocks
STF
RE: Clocks
f-d
ípapß gordo ainÆt no madre flaca!