this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Building a hexadecimal wall clock to count down to the 2038 problem (y2k) (retr0.id)
submitted 1 year ago by Kayel@aussie.zone to c/diy@slrpnk.net
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Hi all, I'm reaching out to the community to help with the design of a hex clock.

I'm honestly very lost on where to start. My current plan is to buy some gears and make a large monstrosity which is unlikely to fit on a wall. Does anyone have a more elegant suggestion?

It's following the general design of a clock with two main differences:

  1. There are 256 seconds in the second hands rotation.
  2. There are 4 hands, the 4th of which measures ~136 years in a rotation.
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[–] tburkhol@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Since the 4 hands are all equal multiples, you should only need two shafts and a bunch of 16:1 reductions, like couples of 10 and 160 teeth. Second hand 10-tooth gear drives a stub 160, coupled to a 10, which drives 160 on the 4-minute hand, coupled to a 10... In my head, gear trains get more complicated when they need more shafts, because making sure all those different shafts are aligned and non-interfering is hard. Just stacking more 10/160 gears on longer shafts is pretty straightforward. Your clock would be deep, but not necessarily large.

If you have a 3D printer, you can download models of gears from places like https://mcmaster.com and print them out. Or modify them and print them. A 3D printed clock isn't likely to last until 2038, but it's great for prototyping.