On 09/09/2015 01:45 PM, Marcus Bowman wrote: > On 9 Sep 2015, at 17:57, Jon Elson wrote: > >> On 09/09/2015 04:17 AM, andy pugh wrote: >>> On 9 September 2015 at 02:36, Jon Elson <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> I've wanted to make a clock that worked by having one ball >>>> lifted up a track per minute, and the ball rolling down the >>>> track flips levers to advance the clock and carry to the >>>> next digit. Kind of merging horology with kinetic sculpture. >>> You can buy those, but it would be interesting to make an attractive one. >>> >>> >> I have a rough design already made up, uses wheels that are >> advanced when the balls hit levers. Different length pins >> on the wheels allow the levers to drop the ball to two >> different tracks to perform the carry. >> >> I also had an idea to do BCD counters with mechanical >> flip-flops and then the FFs would raise pins that would >> select one of ten flags with the digits written on them. >> The balls would have to be pretty heavy to activate all that >> mass. >> > That raises (!) the question of the energy balance within the clock/machine. > The difficulty with ball clocks is that although the ball must do work as it > "falls", you can't afford to take too much energy from it, because the more > energy required to re-instate the ball the more difficult it is to power the > clock with a spring. No, no springs! I was thinking of a crystal oscillator and count-down chain that starts a gear motor once a minute to release one ball onto the track.
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