Dutch designer 3D prints awesome mechanical hand-in-hand clock

May 25, 2015 | By Alec

While a combination of a 3D printer and a couple of electronics often leads to fun little toys, but few makers are confident enough to say that their creation can do the same thing every minute of every day. In other words, something so accurate it can be a clock. And yet that is exactly what the young Dutch designer Yvo de Haas has created, but far from settling for an ordinary clock, he has designed a hand-in-hand timepiece: a minimalistic clock in which the minute hand has been fully incorporated into the hour hand.

As you can see in the photo above, the result is a very basic, smooth design that is perfect for people who love technical gadgets but don’t want too much fuss in their homes. As the 22-year-old Yvo explains on his own tech blog, he is a self-taught electronics wiz who loves to play around with all manner of (3D Printed) creations. ‘I recently moved (and out of my parents’ home) and among the huge amount of stuff missing, is a clock. Now I like quirky stuff, so buying a normal clock simply won't do. There are already a ton of DIY led clocks out there, but I wanted something mechanical,’ he explains.

Check out the clock’s movement here.

While we’ve seen a number of very unusual clocks already (like this Stargate-esque creation), Yvo had his heart set on a hand in hand clock. ‘This clock type has the minute hand attached to the end of the hour hand (and optionally, the second hand to the end of the minute hand). It is a fairly unknown clock type, but I was introduced with it 5 years ago by an old classmate and have been thinking about building one for 3 years now,’ he explains. So what better time to make it than when you’re really in need of a clock? As it was such a success, Yvo simultaneously planned to enter his hand-in-hand clock in no less than three design contests: 3D Printing Contest, Move It Contest and Mind For Design contests.

Fortunately, the ambitious designer wasn’t too busy to share his designs for this cool clock as an open-source project and write a tutorial for it as well. If you’re interested in recreating this 3D printed clock, head over to Yvo’s blog here for all the downloadable stl files and code.

All 3D printed parts.

As Yvo explains, the most time consuming part of constructing this clock is actually the 3D printing the sixteen separate parts you need for it. ‘It is one of my smaller projects, but it will still take around 10 hours to print, depending on your printer and settings. I printed it at 40% infill, at 0.4mm layer thickness. I don´t want to hide the fact that it is 3D printed,’ he explains.

While that might be the most time consuming, it is definitely not as difficult as assembly. While you can find a full list of all the necessary parts in Yvo’s tutorial on Instructables, you will require a lot of bits and bobs to complete the clock. These include: a short stepper motor and a stepper motor driver, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller with at least 5 I/O’s, a 9V or 12V power supply, an electrolytic capacitor, 3 resistors and lots of bearings, nuts, screws and wire.

For assembly it’s probably best to carefully follow Yvo’s instructions, though they should be fairly straightforward. The same can be said for the electronics, though that might be a bit complicated for unexperienced makers. ‘For the clock's microcontroller you will need something that has 5 I/O's and a built in power regulator. I used a trinket, which I stole from my bicycle rim lights. It has 5 I/O's, but does require some careful planning, because not all I/O's respond the same,’ Yvo explains. ‘To run the stepper motor, I use a stepstick A4988 stepper motor driver. There are 2 buttons on the clock to make the time go up and down.’

As for the circuit, Yvo simply relied on a prototype board rather than a PCB, and he therefore doesn’t have an exact design to share. ‘But if you follow the schematic, it should be fairly easy to replicate. The input voltage (9-12V) needs to go to the Vin or VBat pin of you microcontroller. The 5V comes from the microcontroller,’ he advises. ‘To get the power to the clock, you can pick one of two approaches. First, you can try to hide the fact that there are wires running to the clock, secondly, you can make it pretty. I tried to hide the wires by using very thin white wires to feed the clock. The current to these wires on average will be only around 50mA, so there will be no problems.’

And then it’s just a matter of installing everything, which is someone different from a regular clock. Relying on code, the hand-in-hand clock doesn’t actually keep track of time but simply powers a constant interval that doesn’t exactly coincide with the passing of time. ‘The length of the interval will depend on the electronics. I have a 1:4 reduction to the minute hand, and 200 steps per rotation. I also have 1/4 microstepping on the motor driver (the smallest amount before the steps will skip). Totaling this, I needed 3200 steps per hour. This means that the clock will step once every 1.125 seconds,’ he explains. ‘This is odd, a clock that doesn't step every second, but it works.’

The result is a very cool, if not slightly unusual clock that will definitely look cool on any wall in any house, and Yvo calls upon everyone to try and recreate it. In fact, he already points out a couple of points of improvement for others to work on if they want. In the future, Yvo hopes to tackle the power supply to more closely mimic the longevity of regular clocks, as well an additional hand. ‘The problem is that the clock becomes more than twice as complicated with an added second hand. Maybe the next one?,’ he speculates. He also hopes to make the clock less noisy and more balanced. One thing is sure – we’ll hear more from Yvo over the years to come.

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

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