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23/12 - 2022 - The assembly and project (done)

A project log for Making a literal digital clock

This is the start of a bigger project, splitting it up in different pieces. Sit back and relax, its gonna take some time ;-)

flamefireflamefire 12/23/2022 at 15:560 Comments

The Result

So lets start with the finished result. What went good and what went not so good.

It can be seen in the video that the pointers is kind of slacking. They actually weigh to much! F me. That means that the whole system with magnets and hall effect sensor are not the solution to the homing system is probably not what i want. 

The video is a test of the PCBs do please see the review of the PCB's. 

This is the final look of the digital analog clock, to fix the weight of the pointers, i made them very thin, and removed the magnet ofcourse. Maybe some fine tuning could be done about the weight of the magnet and pointers to make it work, yet to be tested.


THE BUILD

Lets talk about what i did to build it.

3D printer

I 3D printed the whole casing on my ender5 3D printer. A lot of fine tuning was done, to make it fit together, and remember all 3D printers are different. For an example the holes for the M5 and M2 screws had to be very accurate for it to fit, the print could otherwise crack. Speaking from experience!

To make it look more like an product, than homebrew i tried different sanding and smoothing techniques.

1. I tried an mixture of acetone and putty, as i had seen in a guide. I feel like the result could be the best with this solution. However a lot of time is required. First you sand the 3D print down with very rough sandpaper. You then mix the acetone(very little) and putty then paint it on the 3D print and sand it down again, with more fine sandpaper. Keep sanding it down until smoothness is achieved. Then lastly paint it your favorite color and keep painting it until the putty cant be seen anymore. This was hard for me because it was painted white.

2. A more simple solution is to apply filler spray and sand it down, keep repeating and lastly paint it.

I found that this simple solution gave a better result.

The PCB build

If you have zero experience with soldering, i would watch a video first. I am definely not good at this, and this is my first time soldering such small components. Fortunately my school has great gear for soldering.

There is a few errors in the PCB unfortunaly. The hall effect sensors are setup to non analog pins on the ESP32. And since the hall effect sensors are analog, this was not working as intended.  This is unfortunate but as said before, the whole homing system is not working because the pointers would weigh to much.

Instead you set the pointers at 6 O'clock as precise as one can be, and turn on the system.  As also can be seen in the video.

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