The sixth and last fabrication assignment focuses on motors. I came back to my series of absurd and user unfriendly objects and made a clock that only shows the passing of time, without giving you the exact hour.
I first purchased a clock movement kit from Michael’s.
I was pretty set on making a wooden clock, but at the same time found myself under time pressure (get it?!? is that why I decided to build a clock?!? 🤯 is this project a Freudian slip?!? 🤯), so the decision came down between appropriating an older Fab project, or using something off the junk shelf. The junk shelf had a broken down wooden wind chime which I looked promising (no photo unfortunately…,) but I ended up choosing to turn my Fab #3 assignment, the pencil holder, into a clock. You can read that blog post for details on how the wooden spiral was built.
Fabricating this project was quite simple—it involved opening up the wooden spiral, placing the clock mechanism inside, drilling a hole of the right size through the spiral’s bottom, re-glueing the spiral, laser-cutting the acrylic sheet and sanding its edges. I tried glueing the clock to the acrylic, but I did not have the appropriate glue for it, and a few experiments (with acrylic cement, general purpose glue and wood glue) all failed.
In retrospect, this project was really fun to build. However, I wish I had more time to dedicate to its fabrication. On the positive side, it definitely made me appreciate clocks and to the point where I want to build a larger clock project in the near future.
