Author Topic: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress  (Read 11732 times)

Offline George_Race

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Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« on: July 25, 2012, 12:30:16 PM »
Ever since seeing Weston's Magnetic Clock at the NAMES show in the Detroit area, I have been busy duplicating his work.  I have made some changes and modification along the way but the overall design is Weston's.

The only really unique thing that I have done, is designed the mounting base to hold the clock while it is being worked on or displayed.

Here is a link to the build that has been going on for the past couple of months.
http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/threads/54089-Building-The-Magnetic-Clock?highlight=Magnetic%20Clock

Here are a couple of pictures to get you interested.  As the build continues I will post updates here as well as on the Home Shop Machinist site.






If you would like to download all the DXF files for the clock they can be found at:
http://www.digitalmachinist.net/downloads
They are under the Spring and Summer 2012 issues.  Download the BYE files.

If you have never seen the Digital Machinist Magazine, while you are there click on the "Get A Free Issue"  on the top right of the page.  A really very fine magazine full of stuff for machinists.

As always, comments and questions always welcomed,
George
Airplane Builder - Pilot
Amateur Radio - WB8BGY
Retired - Having A Ball!

Offline raynerd

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2012, 12:53:36 PM »
Looks great!! Can`t wait to see more and if Weston has more info on the electronics I could very well be tempted!

Chris

Rob.Wilson

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2012, 12:54:31 PM »
Looks great  George   :bugeye:

Looking forward to seeing more , Any chance of a few shouts of your CNC machine .

And whats the diameter of the largest part ?


Cheers Rob

Offline Brass_Machine

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2012, 02:30:19 PM »
Weston is more than welcome to post up about the electronics and what he has for sale to assist in making his clock.

Can't wait to see more!

Eric
Science is fun.

We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.

Offline George_Race

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2012, 05:30:08 PM »
Hi Rob, the Great Wheel is just under 7 inches in diameter.
All the best,
George
Airplane Builder - Pilot
Amateur Radio - WB8BGY
Retired - Having A Ball!

Offline Weston Bye

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2012, 08:47:27 PM »
I will post an overview of the clock design and the electronics kits that I will be selling in the next few days.  Sorry for the delay but things are a little hectic at the moment.
Weston Bye
Practitioner of the Electromechanical Arts.
author of The Mechatronist column
Digital Machinist magazine

Offline dreeves

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2012, 03:12:51 PM »
George, How about a video of you giving the gears a spin. Please give me a push to get more done on my clock.

Dave

Offline George_Race

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Movie - Me showing and telling how it works
« Reply #7 on: July 27, 2012, 07:15:15 PM »
OK Dave, here is a movie of me turning the wheels and explaining what they are doing.  So, turn up the sound on the computer.
I could not figure out how to insert a video file on this page, so below is a download link to the Video File.  It is 19.3 Meg in size and runs a little over 2 minutes.

http://www.mrrace.com/MagClock/MagClock2.mp4

Let me know what you think,
George
Airplane Builder - Pilot
Amateur Radio - WB8BGY
Retired - Having A Ball!

Offline Weston Bye

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2012, 08:36:24 AM »
I have posted a thread in Vendor Specials and Announcements dealing with the availabity of the electronics and plans for the clock.

http://madmodder.net/index.php/topic,7438.0.html

George, great video!  Much better than I would have done.
Weston Bye
Practitioner of the Electromechanical Arts.
author of The Mechatronist column
Digital Machinist magazine

Offline dreeves

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2012, 08:36:31 PM »
George, Great looking video I am waiting on my 3/8 plate  to make the base. I got 5 of the mag wheels done and have several more to do. I will start of the turning on the lathe this week while waiting on the plate. I will post some pictures next week.

Dave

Offline dreeves

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #10 on: August 14, 2012, 09:22:55 PM »
George, Im not as far as you but here is what I have so far.

 Dave

Offline George_Race

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #11 on: August 15, 2012, 06:44:05 AM »
Looking good Dave.  I sure do like the heart shaped openings in the larger wheels, that really adds a very nice personal touch.
I have the electronics board built.  Ran into a small problem and will be posting pictures and comments here as soon as I find a solution to what I am trying to do.

This is  great project!  Really enjoy all the work so far.

George
Airplane Builder - Pilot
Amateur Radio - WB8BGY
Retired - Having A Ball!

Offline George_Race

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Building the Weston Bye Circuit Board
« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2012, 05:57:40 PM »
I have just completed building the Weston Bye Magnetic Clock circuit board.
Here is a picture of how it looks finished.


If you don't consider yourself an electronic guru, you may wish to just buy the assembled board from Weston.  But, it is very easy to build, providing you have a few hand tools and know how to identify and install the parts in the board.

The board comes with a bigger than life picture, which is quite easy to follow.  The circuit board is  double sided and has plated thru holes.  An excellent quality board!

So lets talk about putting it together.  First you need just a few tools.  Here is a picture of what you need.


Both the Needle Nose and Diagonal Cutters are what are called "3 Inch Tools,"  being made especially for working on Circuit Board projects. 
The Soldering Pencil is a 25 Watt unit with a 1/8" chisel tip.  That is the size you need for doing small PCB soldering.  Anything of higher wattage or with a wider tip will possibly burn the foils right off of the PCB, or be so wide you will be bridging adjacent pads when applying solder to a connection on the board.
And of course you need some very fine Rosin Core 60/40 Electronic Solder.

Looking at Weston's board picture, start by installing the two Integrated Circuit sockets.  Be sure to orient the notched end the way the notches in the end of the2 IC's show in the picture.
Next solder in the large blue Electrolytic Capacitor, making sure the line of "minus" signs are pointing the correct direction.  Next solder in the 1N4004 and 1N4743 diodes.  Be sure that the end with the band is on the + end as shown in the picture.
Next solder in the 6 smaller diodes, the iN914's.  There are 6 on the board.  Make sure the black band on each is pointing the correct way, as shown in the picture.
Next install the 3 .1uF capacitors.  They are marked 1.04M  Then the 10 and 22 pF capacitors.  They are clearly marked as 10 and 22.
Now carefully install the 32768 Hz crystal.  Make sure also install the hold down loop over the body of the crystal.
Now install all the resistors.  Here is their color code to make it easier to made sure they are correct.
100 Ohm: Brown Black Brown
10K Ohm: Brown Black Orange
330K Ohm: Orange Orange Yellow
5.1 Meg Ohm: Green Brown Blue
10 Meg Ohm: Brown Black Green
Next install the CENTER IRLZ34N Driver Transistor
Now install the 2 outside ones, tilting them just enough away from the center one to make sure the metal parts do not touch together.
Next is to install the two Integrated Circuits.  Make sure you identify them by the numbers on the top, before plugging them into the sockets!
You will find that the pins are two wide to simply push into the sockets.  What I do is very slightly roll each sides pins on a flat surface to just very slightly bend them toward the center of the chip.  This will allow you to easily insert both sides into the sockets at the same time.

That's it!  You can now attach power and magnet wires to the appropriate places on the board.

With the components supplied, you can expect accuracy to be well within a few seconds a day.  If you have a good frequency counter, you may need to tweak the Oscillator Circuit a little.  My recommendation is to replace the 10pF capacitor with a 15 turn "gimmick."  That is simply a pair of wires wrapped very tightly with 15 turns.  This will make a 15pF capacitor.  This should make the crystal frequency lower than it should be by a few Hz.  Simply cut off one turn at a time from the gimmick to increase the frequency of the crystal a few Hz.

Here is a pictures of a gimmick:


And one last thing, If you don't have the proper tools, don't feel comfortable soldering in small parts, don't have a frequency counter, please consider hav1ng Weston build the board for you.

Hope all this helps,
George

Airplane Builder - Pilot
Amateur Radio - WB8BGY
Retired - Having A Ball!

Offline dreeves

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Re: Building Weston Bye's Magnetic Clock - A work in progress
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2012, 09:32:20 PM »
George, have you done anymore on the clock?

Dave