Thought I would post a few reflections on building the SP8 Coup Perdu and a video of the completed clock.
When Steve released the SP8 I knew I had to make it as I thought the auto-rewind feature was awesome (still do). Bought all the components, put the old modified Ender 3 to work and soon had a bunch of clock shaped parts. The frame was printed from Hatchbox wood, the gears were multi-color filament straight from China and everything else is just from old filament I had in stock.
The instructions were excellent, so the clock went together easily and worked right off the bat. Unfortunately, it would run a day or so and then stop. Tried a few things without much success and then got busy with other things so the clock went on the back shelf. Fast forward to a month or so ago and a fellow was building one of Steve's clocks in another online forum. I felt some embarassment with my half-working clock, so it was time for a debugging session to make it live up to it's full potential.
First, I dissembled the clock. The clutch on mine was really tight so a few winds of the coil spring were nipped and then it was much easier to adjust. All the wire gear arbors were checked to make sure they were still straight. I tried some lithium grease on the escapement but that made things much worse so all that was cleaned off. One of the gears had a single layer of elephant footing on one side from a probable Z offset issue, so a file was used to remove it. I did use some dry graphite powder for lubrication inside the gear arbor holes and a little was rubbed on the escapement.
Not sure exactly what the fix was but it is now running reliably with no pennies in the battery box. I also deleted the second hand for a cleaner look and printed and installed the back weight so the clock would hang nicely off a single screw for a wall mount. Here it is running great in it's permanent location:
Years ago I was goint to tackle a wooden clock using gears made by hand with a jigsaw. Luckily I never did that and got into model engineering instead. It's much less stressfull to make accurate gears with a dividing head on the mill! 😀 The CNC controlled hot plastic gun, aka 3D printer, also seems to do a decent job and this project allowed me to scratch that clockmaking itch.
About the only suggestion I can offer is that it would be nice if the clock dial was completely seperate from the clock frame, perhaps attached with pins or magnets. That way a builder could change clock faces much easier without dissembling the clock and maybe without removing the hands. You could also crank-up the layer resolution for a fancy dial without having to spend hours printing the bland clock frame.
I had enough interest in the electromechinical clock that a month ago I ordered a couple of the electronic workings and they are on route to me via a very slow boat from China. Since ordering the stuff, I'm beginning to think a weight driven clock would be more interesting, especially the newer models like SP13 or the very large SP12. I like how you incorporated lessons learned from previous models. Got too many irons in the fire, however, so it looks like long-term running of the SP8 will be the only clock project for now. I think I can obtain a min per week accuracy (almost that now) and I think that's pretty good.
I wasn't aware PrusaSlicer had a split function like that as I've been using Cura for a long time.