I made a massive step this evening. The daisy wheel has been a source of problems for weeks. Infact, the truth is my first attempt was simply to prove that the principle worked but I`ve added a bearing, changed some dimensions to fit my clock and it has never really be right, often skipping hours or jamming up.
So I went about planning cutting a new wheel. I`ve been buying lots of sheet brass for my project and it is causing a dent in my wallet. With my new found "parting" skills - I stumbled across a 2 3/4" brass bar at the scrap yard, 5" long. Even with enough to hold in the chuck jaws and the waste removed with parting. It is going to be much cheaper parting off brass blanks from this rather than cutting disks from sheet brass. Anyway, I cut myself a blank and then decided the ID must be 34mm to allow the pin wheel to go to full depth in the wheel and the outside diameter 40mm to give enough wall to each "V" to allow the pin to bounce/drive properly.
I`ve cut the other two attempts using a form tool in a fly cutter as I would when trying to cut a gear but this wheel is really thick at 2.5mm!! and there is just too much vibration and material. The plans say to cut by hand anyway so I decided to mark out and cut the notches. I had to work out my angles and then used my CNC divider to mark the points, joining them up with a ruler:
I cut each one by hand:
I then checked all the markings and filed to size which took a good few hours. The pin wheel was binding and I thought all was lost but then realised that the 75deg angle I had used, hadn`t taken into account the radius on the "full" daisy wheel plans - I`m cutting my daisy petals short on purpose as they serve no use other than providing an opportunity for the pins to bind!
So I rounded the corners. It looks more like a daisy now but the plans call for accurate radius on each petal as though the pin is following the tips of the petals. I`ve just rounded mine up to look nice, the important bit is the 75deg notch along with the slight radius of the edge leading into the notch.
I then speeded up the process of checking the daisy motion by putting it into the lathe and it seemed to work just fine! I`ve installed it on the clock and it has been running for 3 hours with no problem, which is longer than my previous two attempts! I`ve got a half decent feeling about this one...
Just the master weight now....although a clockmaker who has given me a lot of advice doesn`t like my jockey weight and pulley so it looks like I`ll have to remake it! The I`m on to working with the brown woody stuff!!
