CNC Machined Wood Clock

by Joni-3D

6.1K7515

Intro: CNC Machined Wood Clock

Hello,

I am a mechatronics student at the Cooperative State University (DHBW) in Stuttgart, Germany.

In this Instructable, I will show you how I built this unique wood clock.

If the clock is turned off, you can only see a normal piece of wood. As you turn it on, the numbers suddenly appear on the plate. It is very beautiful to watch.

The clock consists of a wooden front pannel and back pannel and is around 170 by 400 millimeters in size. The front pannel has many machined pockets with a bottom thickness of only 1mm. These pockets are arranged like a digital clock. LEDs mounted on the back pannel can shine through the thin wood and let it glow very beautifully.

The brain of the clock is an Arduino Nano combined with a real-time-clock module. This module has a small battery to keep track of the time even when the clock is turned off. A light sensor connectet to the Arduino measures the brightness of the environment so that the power to the LEDs can be adjusted automatically. For simplicity, an LED-strip is used instead of individual LEDs. The clock is powered by a USB cable. By using a power adapter it can be plugged directly into the socket.

STEP 1: CNC Milling the Front Pannel

You can use any type of wood you like for the front and back pannel. I just used what I had laying around. The thickness should be around 8 to 25mm.

Now, I layed the wood in my homemade CNC router and made sure that its perfectly leveled. If you don´t level it properly, the wood will get to thin or thick at the bottom of the pockets.

After this, it was time to mill the pockets with a bottom thickness of only 1mm. The speeds and feeds can´t be too aggresive because the thin wood could break easily. Now I drilled the holes for the threaded inserts to screw the front and back pannel together. After this operation, I cut the outside profile.

STEP 2: CNC Milling the Back Pannel

The milling operations of the back pannel are quite similar to the front pannel. The difference is that the pockets have a different shape and are not as deep. They are just used to fit in the LEDs and electronic components. The back pannel is smaller than the front pannel which makes the clock more beautiful. The hole in the middle is needed to access the battery of the RTC when the clock is screwed together.

STEP 3: Soldering the LED Strip

It´s now time for the electronics.

First, I cut the LED strip into segments of 2 and two single ones for the dots. I glued them onto the back pannel at their proper positions. After this, I soldered the strip segments together mostly with some unisolated wires according to my schematic. The Data-Out is connectet to the Data-In of the next segment, starting with the segment number 1. It´s important to solder them in the correct order. This process took a while (nearly 200 connections to solder) and had to be done carefully.

STEP 4: Soldering the Connections

Now I placed the Arduino, the LDR-Lightsensor and the RTC into position and soldered everything according to my schematic. I had to bend the LDR, so that it fits perfectly to the front pannel. You can use some glue or tape to keep cables in place.

STEP 5: Power Supply

To power the clock, I cut an old USB-A cable in half and removed the insulation. I soldered a longer wire to the Vcc (red) and ground (black) wire. You can use any type of usb cable. You could make the clock USB-C powered. Now, I placed the long cable into the slot of the back pannel and added some superglue to hold it in place. I soldered the Vcc wire to the 5V pin and the ground wire to the ground pin of the LED-strip/Arduino.

STEP 6: Upload Arduino Code

To upload the code, you either have to disconnect the Arduino from the LED strip or plug both the Arduino and the USB-power-supply-cable into your computer. This is because the Arduino can´t deliver enough current to power all LEDs at full power.

There are two ways to set the time in the code. You can set the time manually or use the clock of your computer. In both cases, you have to upload the code twice. On the second upload you must remove one line of the code. Otherwise the time will be wrong after you unplug the power cable of the clock.

If it´s to dark in the room, the clock switches to night mode. After reaching a certain threshold, the clock switches to day mode. You can adjust both switching points as well as the different power levels in the code. It´s also easy to change the color of the LEDs. Feel free to experiment with these parameters.

You can change between 12 and 24 hour format by adding/removing line 111 of the code.

If the battery of the RTC runs out and the time is wrong, you just have to upload the code again.

STEP 7: Final Assembly

It´s now time to screw the front and the back pannel together. To mount the clock onto the wall, I screwed in a small hook that grabs into a nail in my wall. You can also build some feet for the clock if you dont want to put it onto the wall.

Now you have a beautiful unique wood clock that, as far as I know, can not be purchased anywhere!

STEP 8: Warning

The combination of wood and electronics can lead to fire. It is always good to add a fuse with a rating of less than 1 amp to prevent a fire. I didn´t use one, because i use a power adapter with a very low current output.

13 Comments

Kornelia 6 weeks ago

Hi! I really liked your CNC clock design. I would also like to make something like this as a gift, but please tell me if you could give me the specific dimensions of this milling? because I see that the cutter here is deeper than 1 mm. if you could also send me this wood clock front and wood clock back file, only if it was in pdf or .eps

are you able to send me something like that? I would be very very grateful

Regards
Cornelia


Joni-3D 5 weeks ago

Hi Cornelia,

I have added the files to the instructable. For the milling, I used a 4mm endmill with a cutting length of 20mm. But you can also use a thinner piece of wood.

Regards

Jonathan

avaalizadeh 7 weeks ago

The housing of your project is well-designed and clean; it's hard to notice any of the components. It's thoughtful to provide easy access to the circuit in case one of the LEDs encounters an issue. Additionally, I appreciate that you've shared your code with us, as I don't often use Arduino for my own projects. Keep up the good work!

Cion Cassiano 4 months ago

Congratulations on your project. I have a basic question about the program. Why did you write the code for the functions off() and number() inside the loop? Thank you for your attention.

Joni-3D 4 months ago

Thank you. The code for the functions is actually not in the loop section. It is located below the loop section.

Cion Cassiano 4 months ago

Thank you for the response. I indeed made a mistake in reading the code. Once again, I commend your project.

MarkL201 4 months ago

how do I get a copy of the separated file, as I do not know how to use auto desk Fusion 3D

pablo de paris 4 months ago

Brilliant project. Very elegant. very nice combination of nature and technology

Beaker99 4 months ago

I made one similar, although much larger with 6 LEDs per segment. A couple things I took away from my project; You don't need really thick wires since it is not a huge amount of current you are carrying (depending on the number of LEDs you are lighting) - So not bending those thicker wire makes it easier, and they don't pull off the LED pads as easily with thinner wire. I also separated each given group onto their own lines, and used an array when working with them which contained the different hardware pin numbers. It also shows the date every {x} seconds - or not at all. Everything is adjustable, and I also put back lighting on each side adjustable with brightness and color (I have some LEDs left and a few hardware lines unused...)

Originally I tired using the aluminum track with the diffused covers, as you can see, that didn't turn out very well. That's when I decided to put the complete cealing tile cover over that. I was trying to get a diffused digit without the LEDs showing. I never figured out how to do that.

I also made mine with an NANO with an HC-05 BLE, and a Real time clock module and wrote a menu for it that allows changing the date/time, colors of each section of the clock - so digits, flashing colon, am/pm indicator, back lights. You can link to the clock using bluetooth and change everything. I used the flash memory for a lot of the text, so the programming was pretty harry, optimizing it to fit. I think I had 28 bytes of program memory left by the end. Reusing text over and over again for different prompts helped save memory. Lots of work; I cut the top board with a Dremel, used a solid back, and covered it with that plastic ceiling lighting panel stuff. It is 3' by 1'-6" in size, my best project to date I think.

Joni-3D 4 months ago

Very nice project! Making everything
changeable with Bluetooth is definitely cool. I have also thought about that
before starting to build the clock, but I decided against it. Wood completely
blocks blue light and green light is absorbed quite much. Therefore, the colour
always must be some kind of red, so there is no need to change that often.


The backlight is a very good idea and looks great.
Maybe I will also add a backlight to my clock.


I achieved a perfect diffusion of the light, so that
nobody can see the individual LEDs. This is because thin wood is very good at
diffusing light and the LEDs are around 10mm away from it.


I didn’t add a am/pm indicator because I use the 24-hour
time format here in Germany.


You are absolutely correct with the thickness of the
wires. I used them because I didn’t have thin wires laying around. I love to
use things that I have on hand.

Beaker99 4 months ago

Thanks. I had no idea wood could diffuse light like that - nor that it doesn't pass certain colors. Yeah, you can select 12/24 via the menu too, I'm just partial to 12 hr format I guess. If I have access to a router it would have been a lot easier than dremeling out the wood patterns, your's is a much cleaner plan than what I had. In the end mine should have been simpler by not using metal trays and covers to start with - the plastic cover was a last ditch effort to salvage something that didn't come out the way I wanted originally

MarkH342 4 months ago

I love this idea. I think it could also be done with a laser cut piece and a thin piece of wood on top.