Lego Mechanical Wall Clock Hybrid Review

[Fabulous Fox]

History

For years now I have been following all content related to Lego clocks online. My love for real life clocks, with all their mechanical complexity and beauty, pairs perfectly with the art of Lego. I have even built a few Lego clocks by others over the years, (notably, some from @nico71, @KEvron , and Dillon Sharlet's recent wall clock on YouTube) but most of them did not end up working very reliably aside from KEvron's. It's insane the amount of hours I spent tinkering with their clocks years ago, for good reasons, though.

These clocks were great and were a great accomplishment in of themselves, but they were not the most practical. Some you had to balance on the edge of a table and some you had to design your own wooden bracing so they could be held to the wall. 

Then came along Darrel Aldrich on YouTube with his wall clock designs. His clocks are designed to simply hand on one screw on the wall (using the Lego Art mosaic set hanger piece) and are designed around a few main "frame" pieces which allow you to place various axles to your heart's content. Not only do these frame pieces make it easy to design a relatively strong structure (still not as strong as Lego Technic bricks I don't think, as KEvron commonly used, but enough nonetheless), but they make it easy to place the axles and gears all on one plate, similar to a real clock. It uses a grasshopper escapement, which does not (theoretically) have friction when the pallets work with the escapement, which is good for Lego parts and just a great/interesting mechanism all around.

After a few more years of not making any Lego clocks, this spring I finally built Aldrich's most recent automatic wall clock. Now, once again I spent a long time tinkering with the grasshopper escapement he used and ultimately, it was too finicky for me. Plus, at that point I also wanted the clock to be fully manual so that I could sleep knowing there was no electricity in it whatsoever. So two months or so after the first version, I re-designed the clock to his manual version of the wall clock and put in a grasshopper escapement from @Davidz90.

David is the ultimate Lego clock wizard.

He's made countless clocks and knows every bit about the physics involved in them. In fact, he even wrote a book, "Guide to Lego clocks: Science of measuring time with bricks," which can be found on Amazon. I read his book and asked him (way too many) questions about his various grasshoppers and clock physics. It even got me to start reading more articles and papers on clock physics/history, which I love. Again, a couple months later and (many) more versions tested and re-tested later, I arrived at the current version the clock is in.

Intro 

The clock is meant to be fairly accurate, easy to mount, easy to adjust, and decently-good-looking. It can be within a minute accurate per week (definitely more if you really fine-tune the pendulum length) and runs for around 48 hours on a weight and chain system designed by Aldrich.

I eventually want to design a proper box/face for it in the future and add more complications, but for now this is sufficient.

Below is the video I recently made of the clock. It is not meant to be an elaborate video, just more of a quick review of Aldrich's and Ziemkiewicz's combined into my own clock. In the video description is a list of great Lego clock topics and YouTube channels worth looking into. I only posted one image to here because it won't let me upload more file sizes 
 

Specifications:

• 100% manual (no electronics), 100% Lego, 100% non-modified parts, only hung by one screw.
• Pendulum is two seconds and has been a few seconds accurate a day in my week of testing this version (under a minute each week).
• It runs for around 48 hours on an H-loop chain system (by Aldrich), where the chain is simply pulled up by a chain when needed.
• Escapement is a grasshopper from Ziemkiewicz.
   
• Pendulum is around 240 grams.
• Weight is around 860 grams.
• Gear ratio from 24 tooth chain gear to the 40 tooth escapement is 1:75.

Honorable Mentions

The following people have either helped me build Lego clocks or greatly inspired me to get into the craft (YouTube handles): ‪

@darrellaldrich8334‬ 
‪@davidziemkiewicz1350‬ ‪
@KEvronista‬ ‪
@DillonSharlet‬

Videos Mainly Used to Make this Clock
 

 

 

[Davidz90]

Congratulations on a fantastic achievement! I'm really happy I could help, and that there are so many enthusiasts of this somewhat niche hobby 

The accuracy is truly astonishing - under a minute per week is up there with the best of the best. You have already beaten:

-best mechanical wristwatches

-average "real" grandfather clocks

-cheapest quartz watches

Fantastic! Next step would be thermal expansion compensation, but that would most likely need non-Lego parts. (however, you might check Kei Abe on youtube, he has built 100% Lego thermal compensation)