#3d clock models how to#

Shouldn’t your shop have a clock that’s customized with your own shop logo? I don’t see why not. Fly fisherman? Put a different fly at each hour. Maybe you’ve got a friend that loves dogs–come up with a clock that has a different breed for each hour as a gift. Add a little CNC Vinyl work or maybe laser print the face on some shiny transparency it could turn out to be quite a slick piece. Now you can see how easily you could make a very personalized clock, perhaps a gift for someone. The 3D Printer made the case and hands, but the actual clockwork is just a purchased quartz movement–they’re available cheaply for such projects from a variety of sources. How about this whimsical, modern, and iconic clock made of dashboard widgets: Of course we can do that with clocks too. I’ve coined the term “Reskinning” for projects that are essentially putting a pretty face on some existing thing. After all, they did start out largely for prototyping. The point is, there’s a world of projects available once you consider taking advantage of things that weren’t even done on a 3D Printer originally. Pretty soon they had 3D Printed Clockwork:Īnd pretty soon they had a 3D Printed Clock: They started with a Wooden Clock called Septimus: That’s what University College London did with their 3D Printed Clock. The thing is, you can take a CNC Router Clock, intended to be made of wood, and change it over to a 3D Printed version pretty easily. I’ve written about this for CNC Router Clock Projects before on CNCCookbook. I love the exposed gearing of some clocks. University College London’s 3D Printed Clock Now go on, admit it, it’d be pretty cool to hang that up on your wall and tell your buddies you’d made it with your 3D Printer! These are the parts you’ll be 3D printing for the MakerBot Clock… This is another Thingiverse project, and looks to be a fairly simple 3D printer project to make a clock like this: All the necessary files are available ( links on the video page) as well as this video of the clock: Maybe this kind of a construct is part of your next automated manufacturing invention? After all, the Arduino computer that powers it made it possible for an extremely simple mechanical mechanism to do some really sophisticated things. If nothing else, maybe it’ll give you an idea for some other machine. The plotclock definitely falls into the category of a “Thingy”.

#3d clock models how to#

Full details are available on how to build your own plotclock over on Thingiverse. This is one of those Arduino projects, and it uses 3 servos from the radio controlled airplane and car hobby to move the pen. Not sure how practical some of these things are, but they are definitely fun. Combining computers, CNC/Robotics, and clever programming can produce amazing results. This is the kind of crazy over-the-top project nobody would’ve even dreamed of back in the late 70’s when the personal computer revolution started. Since seeing is believing, check the video: It even erases it so it can write it again, over and over. It’s a 3D Printed Clock that writes the time out on a scrap of whiteboard with a marker. This first one has little to do with clockwork and everything to do with clocks and just plain being cool, so I had to start here. Plotclock: An Open Source 3D Printed Clock that Writes the Time This post is a survey of some 3D Printed Clockwork projects I found interesting. The biggest hit to date had been a Turner’s Cube, but I digress. I make a lot of tooling and parts for other projects (spares for some of my cars, for example), but it isn’t very often that I get to make something they really think is cool. Who knows, maybe this would be a good way to prototype some of the gear trains for my Astro Clock? This also goes under the category of wanting to do something with CNC that my (nearly all) non-CNC friends would find interesting. Meanwhile, with a new 3D Printer on its way to CNCCookbook (just got the tracking notice yesterday, very excited!), I started wondering about making a clock with the 3D Printer.

It’s one of those projects I promise myself I will be devoted to when my life is a little less busy (does that time ever come?). Long time CNCCookbook readers will have come across my project-in-planning Astronomical Clock.