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That’s a cool project and I can see the balance spring being the most critical part - is it all made of the same material? Can’t really tweak it once it’s made either I guess.
Look forward to progress shots please.
inchpincher-
There's a trade off between durability and ease of printing. The chap who made that design used PLA which is very easy to print but it is very susceptible to warping or even melting in direct sunlight so longevity of the model would be a problem.
If I'm putting this much effort into something I'd rather it survived for a while so I'm printing it in ABS, which is durable but a bitch to print. The main reason for this is that it tends to warp while being printed so peels itself off the print bed. To counteract this I have built a heated enclosure around my FDM printer to maintain an air temperature of about 45 degrees and am using a special adhesive called 3dlac to hold everything flat.
Its likely that a lot of tweaking will be necessary. In order to get ABS to stick to the print bed you need a very high temperature. I'm going for 105 degrees which is the glass transition point of ABS. A 3d printed part that has sat on 105 degrees will develop something called "Elephant Foot" where the bottom layer sags under the weight of the rest of the part so I'll probably need to hand finish each part to make sure there are no lips or deformities. Lube will be required too. Thankfully have a large range of inert watch making lubes so I'm not so worried about that.
Sure, will post photos as and when there is something interesting to see. Will turn on the timelapse camera inside the printer too.
Just placed an order for the 77 necessary nuts, bolts and washers.
Imagine having the skills to actually design a model like that. Its like black magic to me.
Stonehedge
I think its about a year since I posted on here showing off the model of an escapement I was trying to build. After a total fucking nightmare trying and failing to calibrate my printer to the level needed to print a hair spring, I gave up in a fit of pique and binned my progress thusfar.
Fast forward a year and it appears that my skills and kit may have progressed enough to give it another crack. Wish me luck!