Wooden gear clocks

[leomoria]

Hi
Thank you for allowing me to join in. I am a newbee
I would like to get a cnc router to cut wooden gears for a wooden gear clock
The gears are cut from good quality Birch plywood
Is any one doing this to help me pick the correct millright router?

[oldtech]

Can you provide details - power, gear radius, thickness, the number of teeth, ...?

[dadof4]

Here...
www.cncsmartcut.com/brian-lawrsquos-wooden-clocks.html

[oldtech]

It looks like the first thing you need to do is to decide on the sizes of the clocks that you want to build and then match with a machine. While it is possible to machine longer pieces in multiple stages, that will be more complex. It's also possible that you could scale the clocks down to fit.

[Leo Moriarity]

Hi
Thanks for your response. The wooden gears vary in shape from involute design to something like a saw tooth. The clocks that I like come with a DFX file for the parts. The clock face and gears could require a work area of 14"+ in Dia. The gears could be 12"in dia with 60 + teeth or 3" in dia with 10 teeth
The M3 router work area is to small for this . The Carve king has the the right size. It is the question of which model is MORE THEN adequate. Has any one cut accurate circles? Is there a problem with the motors losing step counts because the router is working hard? Should I try to find the extra money to buy the more powerful routers such as the Power route kit bundle, or the Mega V bundle. Would that be over kill. Has your projects expand once you start using the router. Thanks Leo

[leomoria]

Aug 12, 2020 23:11:04 GMT dadof4 said:

Here...
www.cncsmartcut.com/brian-lawrsquos-wooden-clocks.html

[leomoria]

Thank you for the link to Laws clocks

[martin]

Another design option is Clayton Boyer:

www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm

...and projects always, always, always expand. Or, at least, they do for me, so IMHO the biggest envelope you can afford. Every time I've chosen smaller I've ended up regretting it (well, unless my larger space constraints intrinsically limit my options -- it's not like I'm gonna get some big-ass gantry laser in my garage regardless of how much fun it might be).

If you want to really get into clocks, you'll probably end up buying Gearotic at some point:

gearotic.com/

It outputs DXF and these gear files can be truly gigantic -- it doesn't take many gears to bring my computer to its knees. Zillions of tiny lines for every tooth. Even so, despite all the idiosyncrasies, for clock design I haven't found anything to equal it.

[Vaughan]

Consider the wood you will use. Wood moves and warps, especially when you are making it into such small pieces. Baltic birch is great but I don't like the look of plywood. I discovered laminated bamboo cutting boards at Walmart. They cut very well and don't warp at all.