Happy New Year Steve! I have a great idea that I think would be very popular if you could make it a reality. I am a collector of mechanical clocks which is how I found out about your designs. One of my favorite clocks has a moon phase. I was thinking of trying to add a moon phase to your easy build clock, but I'm not sure that I have the design skills. I have included some photos of one of my clocks and how the moon phase mechanism works. All it is, is a pin on a gear that rotates once every 24 hours. The pin bumps into the moon wheel and advances it one tooth every day. There doesn't appear to be a gear that rotates once every 24 hours on the easy build clock, but there is a gear that rotates every 12 hours, so I believe another gear could be added to mesh with that one to fix that.
If you could make this I believe it would be a first for 3d printed clocks and I think it would be awesome. This same pin idea could also be used for a date function. Instead of the wheel having a moon printed on it, it could have numbers from 1 - 31 for the date.
I think this would be an awesome addition that many other people would also enjoy.
Nick,
Your post got me thinking about moon phases, so I started designing one. All of my wall clocks have the escapement above the dial and I like keeping it visible. The plan is to let the moon dial fille the main dial.
Here is a preliminary prototype. There are no gears yet and I still need to work out the second friction clutch to move the moon without affecting the time. It will need to use 5 and 6 tooth pinions.
Steve