Ball Clock II ~ Hour Counter – Phase I

Hour SelectorSo far I have gotten the quarter hour strikes working and routed the extra balls back to the second lift.

I struggled with how to keep track of the hours and also at the same time select the right number of balls to feed the striker mechanism.  That and fit it all into a rapidly diminishing real estate.

It quickly became obvious that I did not have enough room to use the straight line approach for selection and must figure out an arc solution.  Spending some time in CAD, a concept took shape.

Photo 186 croppedAt least enough so to start construction.  I would figure out the details later.

I wanted to work out first the accumulation of the balls that would keep track of the hours.  The top section of the assemble will do that.  The lower section will be for the magazine of striker balls.  Once triggered the cycle would move the selector until it contacted the balls on the upper rack.  When stopped, a slide would separate the same number of balls on the bottom rack.  At full cycle, the balls on the bottom rack would be released into the striker mechanism.  (Not made yet)

Photo 187 CroppedEarly on, there was a diverter than would route one ball on the hour to a different path.  I needed to receive that ball so it had some place to go.

The next aspect was the collect balls for a supply magazine for the striker.  I had excess balls not used for the quarter hour magazine coming down every minute.

The trick is to divert the needed balls from the exit path to the striker magazine.

Photo 193 CroppedOnce the striker magazine was full, then allow unneeded balls to pass by and return to the second lift.

So this post is only about making the structure to hold the hour balls and the magazine for the strike.  The last photo shows balls in the upper rack for the hour count.  Now every hour a ball will end up in the upper rack.  Since there is only room for about 12 balls, right now the clock can only run for twelve hours unattended.

Next step will be to get the balls into the striker magazine.

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