Flip-Segment Digital Clock Is A Miniature Mechanical Marvel

Clocks are these mundane objects that it’s occasionally tricky for them to seize your focus. They’re there when you need to have them, but they don’t exactly invite you to observe them get the job done. Except if, of training course, you create some thing like this mechanical flip-segment clock with a fascinating exposed mechanism

“Eptaora” is the name of this clock, in accordance to its inventor [ekaggrat singh kalsi]. The intention listed here was to make a mechanical flip-section screen as small as achievable, which meant starting off with the smallest feasible printable screw hole and scaling the structure up from there. Just about every segment is controlled by a multi-lobed cam which bears on a spring-loaded cam follower. When the cam rotates in opposition to the follower, a phase is flipped up from the horizontal relaxation placement to the vertical display situation. A carryover system connects two adjacent displays so that just about every pair of digits can be driven by a one stepper, and the concluded clock is rather compact — a little bit larger than the palm of a hand. The operation seems very clean, far too, which is usually a bonus with clocks these as these. Verify out the mesmerizing mechanism in the video underneath.

We’d have sworn we covered a similar clock in advance of — indeed [ekaggrat] claims the inspiration for this clock came from one particular with a comparable mechanism — but we could not obtain it in the back catalog. Oh certain, there are flip-up digital clocks and all manner of mechanical 7-segment displays, but this a single appears to be very distinctive, and really satisfying.