The Time Vortex Clock

thingiverse

The idea for a ball bearing clock was inspired by the "Idle-Tyme Clock " and "Time Machine Clock". However unlike those designs which have a maze of tracks to deliver the balls back to the start mine has a couple of funnels and a spiral. Also unlike those designs where the motor timing is critical for accurate time and the accuracy will degrade as the motor wears, in my design the accuracy is not dependent on the motor speed (once a minute the motor is turned on and the motor is then turned off when a ball bearing is delivered at the top, it doesn't matter if it takes 1 second or 59 seconds). To read the clock, start at the bottom and work up. The bottom arm displays the hour, the middle arm displays tens of minutes and the top arm displays the minutes, and the oled display will show the seconds. The way they work is that once a minute a ball is delivered to the top track which feeds the minutes arm, once that arm gets to 9 the next ball will cause the arm to tip which dumps out all the balls most of which are returned to the bottom but the ball that caused it to tip will go down a different track which feeds the tens of minutes arm, if that arm is full it will cause it to tip and empty and the ball that caused it to tip will feed the hours arm. That means that the top arm will dump every 10 minutes, the tens minutes track will dump every hour, and the hours arm will dump every 12 hours. When the clock goes from 12:59 to 1:00 is the most dramatic time where all 3 arms will dump. The Time Vortex has a demo mode where balls are delivered continuously or with a small delay. Video in continuous demo mode: https://youtu.be/z7Dq6jFfYC8 Slow motion video of the big dump, top view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4OKb21Jx5k Slow motion video of the big dump, front view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6scgrva1QpQ Video in demo mode 1 second delay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVn0acPUzjw Boring video in normal clock mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzpCU1eFGS0 Other parts needed: At least 29 ball bearings, 9.5mm or 3/8 inch diameter. N20 metal gear motor (speed isn't critical, I'm using a 12v 100RPM motor) Arduino nano or clone. DS3231 RTC module .96 inch 128x64 I2C SSD1306 oled display 2x tactile push button switches 6mm x 6mm x 5mm 7x Geekcreit WS2812B SMD LED's 2N3904 NPN Transistor (or similar) 1K ohm resistor 1N4948 diode (or similar) .1uf (100nf) capacitor Some copper foil Circuit board (Holder is for 77mm x 60mm x 1.2mm) Some small connectors (I used micro jst 1.25mm connectors, 2-pin and 4-pin) Some wire (CAT5 cable works nicely) Optional 5x M3 x 15 screws and nuts for adjustable feet. I cut some old circuit board I had laying around to size, it might be on the thin size, I can supply a holder for thicker board if needed.