This is a cool project and an interesting design, but after reading the description I'm still not clear on how it actually works. How is it choosing which balls get retained each rotation when the top part is basically all fixed magnets?
I was surprised by this, as I assumed from the first pictures that it was going to be electromagnets. Seems like a lot of moving parts to do it this way.
Nice. This suggests a similar mechanism for a larger display, where you have a board with a large number of holes and magnets to hold the balls, and a traveling write head that places them.
They used the cheaper servos for this build, understandably, but if you buy some more expensive ones you can probably make it nearly silent. This would also likely let you make the servos move faster and reduce the time it takes to update (and thus make noise) at the same time. I'd also consider maybe using solenoids to move the magnets in and out which could be completely silent then too, at the expense of needing some more current when engaging if you add some damping, just a little felt at the end of the rod. Then switch to steppers for the rotation and lifting the ball platform and you could likely have it completely silent.
> The Ferrolic is currently still in development, although the designer intends to make small batches available for pre-order, with each clock costing $8,300 (£5,300).
I fell in love and needed one right until I saw the pricetag. Beautiful clock though - thank you for sharing :)
The designer's personal site, and the clock site are both now gone, so I am assuming he never got to production stages... still an amazing idea, and an inspiration for anyone that would like to try building one on their own...
Maybe, but I probably wouldn't try to use them for that. Instead I'd look into getting some kind of latching solenoid to move the real magnets in and out of position. That'd let you have it be silent (or nearly so) and not need to keep the magnets energized the entire time, reducing power usage. Then steppers for the rotation and platform lift
Before I looked at the details, I thought it was electromagnetically driven. Combine that with a power outage, and you’re hunting for little steel balls on the floor. But at least you’d know when the power went out, based on which ones are missing from the base.
There are classes of relays that worked like that in old portable broadcast video recorders. Essentially a coil around a magnet and the coil was used to strengthen or weaken the flux with a pulse of current. The armature was spring loaded but not strong enough to release from the permanent magnet unless a pulse of "buck" current was applied.
Beautiful result. I always liked the use of ball bearings in design. It reminds me of the bradley timepiece, which is an analog watch that uses one: https://www.eone-time.com .
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] threadThough of course the mechanism is very different here.
I fell in love and needed one right until I saw the pricetag. Beautiful clock though - thank you for sharing :)
Old timey stuff.
Well.