“I have toyed with the idea of building a clock for sometime and my sister had a big birthday coming up so I decided that this was a great opportunity to build a clock for her as a gift. My sister has a PhD in science and works as a science educator so I decided to make a science themed clock.
I wanted to make the clock slightly different, the first thing that stands out with this clock is that it doesn’t have numbers, I used the periodic table elements instead. For those of you that don’t know here’s a list of the elements I used with there corresponding number
H-Hydrogen
He-Helium
Li-Lithium
Be-Beryllium
B-Boron
C-Carbon
N-Nitrogen
O-Oxygen
F-Fluorine
Ne-Neon
Na-Sodium
Mg-Magnesium
So rather than 6 O-Clock it is actually carbon o-clock etc.
The clock has both digital and analogue systems for time keeping. The analogue system simply uses two stepper motors for moving the hands in hour or minute steps. The hands can be adjusted manually with the buttons on the side of the electronics enclosure. The digital system keeps track of the time by lighting up an LED adjacent to the corresponding hour. I have also made this part of the clock more interesting, at the turn of the hour the LEDS light up in sequence forward then backwards through the next corresponding 12 hours and then stops at the current hour staying lit for the next 60 minutes. The combination of using Fusion 360 and my 3D printer really made the analogue part of this clock build very easy.
The Supplies I used were as follows:
- 1 x 3mm Plywood sheet, 600mm x 400mm
- 4 x Red 5mm LEDs
- 4 x Blue 5mm LEDs
- 4 x Green 5mm LEDs
- 4 x Yellow 5mm LEDs
- 12 x 220 ohm resistors
- 1 x Roll of Hookup wire
- 1 x PLA for 3D Printer
- 1 x 300mm long 8mm diameter Brass Rod
- 4 x 8mm Shaft Collars
- 1 x 8mm Self Aligning Pillow Block Bearing
- 2 x Stepper Motors, 28BYJ-48
- 2 x Driver Board Modules for Stepper Motors, ULN2003
- 4 x Spring Return Push Buttons
- 1 x 2 position Toggle Switch
- 1 x Arduino Mega
- 1 x Real Time Clock Module, DS1307”