Show HN: Mechanical clock simulation in WebGL

Nikita, this is brilliant. I&#x27;ve been doing some experiments with creating 3D models for How a Car Works using threeJS (there&#x27;s a very basic alpha proof-of-concept at <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.howacarworks.com&#x2F;3D&#x2F;charging-a-car-battery" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.howacarworks.com&#x2F;3D&#x2F;charging-a-car-battery</a> ). I&#x27;d love to commission you to create some moving models of car components - drop me an email if you&#x27;re interested me@alexmuir.com

That was a useful animation: it made me realise that I didn&#x27;t really know how a clock worked; I only had a fuzzy -and wrong- understanding of how the the parts worked together.<p>Good use of visualisation and animation is an extremely powerful tool for triggering that aha! moment.

I think you mounted the main spring the wrong way? The way it is currently, the clock&#x27;s operation would wind it tighter.

In Chrome, the minute hand didn&#x27;t move anywhere near 10 minutes worth over 10 minutes of watching the mechanism. Are the gear mechanisms designed to accurately reproduce a real hour&#x2F;minute clock, or is it just intended to be an example of the kind of mechanism used?

Nice animation. I&#x27;d add the option to show the speed of each gear (a curved arrow around the axis, with a label &quot;1 turn per 15 seconds&quot;, and perhaps the number of cogs in each gear).<p>I&#x27;d like to see one additional simple version with only one gear, so it&#x27;s easy to understand how the balance &#x2F; anchor &#x2F; escape work.<p>Another nice version would be a linearized version, where all the gears are in a row, so they are easy to see. Bonus points for a smooth transformation from the linearized version to the actual version.

Balance wheel(oscillating wheel in demo. Its the brain. it keeps the time accurate)---&gt;Lever escapement fork(looks like pin pallet. Your watch&#x27;s fork looks more like a dinner fork)---&gt;Escapement wheel---&gt;Fourth wheel---&gt;Third wheel---&gt;Center wheel(holds the dial hands)---&lt;&gt;Barrel wheel(stores the power. connects to Center wheel). The small wheel connected to only the center wheel is the setting wheel.<p>The animation makes the it so much easier than a verbal walk through. Couldn&#x27;t stop chiming in; I am working on a pin pallet watch (Amida 542 movement) right now, and frustrated. The blue mainspring just broke, and its a weird size, measured in Dennison units. I need a social life.<p>If interested in Watch repair buy Practical Watch Repairing by Donald De Carle, preferably 3rd. edition. to start your library. If you really want to build a watch from a chunk of brass, maybe a little gold, and watch lathe, buy George Daniels book Watchmaking. George Daniels invented the Co-axial escapement(an unusual escapement that Omega adopted, and might not need lubrication.), and was a great Watch Maker&#x2F;machinist. He supposedly did his best work after 50.

Nice. It seems that small spring is driving the &quot;ticking&quot; of the clock, so does the winding of the springs wind both the large and small spring? Also, it&#x27;s surprising to me how the small spring could tick accurately, since I would think that it&#x27;s rate of oscillation changes as the spring unwinds, so that you cannot rely on each tick being a constant amount of time. How is the problem avoided or mitigated?

Zooming-in is a bit tricky as a page scroll is triggered. Might help to add<p><pre><code> event.preventDefault(); </code></pre> to the wheel event listener function.

I&#x27;m not entirely sure, but zooming closer to gear teeth interaction, it looks like cogs aren&#x27;t aligning perfectly like they do in real life? I&#x27;m viewing this in firefox, so that might be a reason as well.

<i>An Electrical Engineering View of a Mechanical Watch</i>:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;video.mit.edu&#x2F;watch&#x2F;an-electrical-engineering-view-of-a-mechanical-watch-9035&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;video.mit.edu&#x2F;watch&#x2F;an-electrical-engineering-view-of...</a>

This is really cool!<p>WebGl is so difficult, UI-wise, on a tablet. It&#x27;s not your fault, but I wish Apple would translate some of the desktop metaphors (scroll&#x2F;pan&#x2F;zoom) for this context.

It looks like the main spring is flipped 180 degrees. I speeded up the clock movement and it looks like it would be tightened, not loosened.

Nice, but I don&#x27;t think the escape wheel animation is correct. The explanation says it pushes something but I don&#x27;t see it.

Nice! Can you give more details on how you made the simulation?

Very cool and informative at the same time. Well done!

It&#x27;s an animation, not a simulation.<p>And not a very good one, gear teeth intersect all over the place:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;xDWigpp.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;xDWigpp.jpg</a>

i hope next version will come with tri-axial tourbillon :)

Beautiful.

cool