Wooden Gear Clock

Step 2 How Does It Work?

The clock I have designed is a basic pendulum clock. These have been in existance since the mid 1600's. It uses a weight as the energy source, and a pendulum to regulate how fast this energy escapes.

The weight is wound around one of the axles. As it pulls down, it rotates the gears causing the minute and hour hands to rotate. If this was just the weight and gears, when the weight was released, the gears would spin for a few seconds and the weight would hit the floor. This isn't very practical unless you want to pretend you are in a time machine. Placement of the weight and cord is a little critical. You want it farther down the gear train so you aren't winding the clock every 4 hours. Once or twice a day isn't bad. The farther down on the gear train, the slower it will unwind. If it is placed on the hour hand, you can easily get by with winding once a day.

We need some way to allow this energy to escape slowly. This is where the "Escapment " comes in. From the word escape, it allows the energy of the weight to escape in a slow manner, as to not use up the energy at once. This escape mechanism also creates the "Tick Tock" that you hear from clocks. The escapement is built out of the escape gear, escape lever, and the pendulum. The pendulum swings back and forth moving the escapement lever in and out of the escape gear, causing the gear to stop spinning. This allows the energy of the weight to be spread over a period of time so you are not winding the clock every 2 minutes.