Rubber-Band Powered Escapement w/Pendulum

thingiverse

This is a test jig for, and a derivative of, the parametric escapement mechanism I posted yesterday: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7785 The intent is to power the escapement with a rubber band and see: whether the pendulum regulates the unwinding of the elastic and whether the escapement in turn keeps the pendulum moving despite friction I suspect it will NOT work as is, but some parametric tweaks might get it going. May need to add some other weigh at the end of the pendulum, the plastic may not be enough. Also not sure if this would work printed... the escapement wheel's teeth are pretty fine at the tips. Lastly, the code is less well commented that the parent thing's. I'll fix that later, promise. :-) (EDIT: I have cleaned up the code and broken it into a library, and a test script. That is the code I will be maintaining and it can be found as its own thing: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7822 ) Instructions Print out the drum, the pendulum and the support. Attach the support to a vertical surface, and slip the drum and pendulum onto their respective pegs (see jpeg for what goes where). Attach one end of a rubber band to the side of the drum, wind it around the drum a couple times (nothing too tight, just a little potential energy for the machine) and attach the other end to the remaining peg. Push everything as far back as it will go against the stops, making the pendulum's escapement pallets mesh with the drum's teeth, and let go. Give the pendulum a gentle nudge to get it going. Write an angry comment here telling me it didn't work! ;-)