Stock triple axis tourbillon clock

[Aphobius]

A clock that I've made, it has a triple axis tourbillon, it shows the minutes and the hours (only 6, because it's showing the time from Kerbin), it's at the North pole and it's rotating so it keeps pointing towards the sun. It's completely stock, the only mod that I've used after making the clock was KerbCam for the intro scene of the video.

Thanks to Luizopiloto for suggesting the song and to Majorjim! for inventing the thermometer hinge.

I was able to synchronize it almost perfectly to the Kerbal time (interface time), but for the video I had to slow it down a little, at the end of the 7 hours it was 7 minutes behind the interface time, but still around 5 minutes ahead of the sun. I'm not sure why this was happening, I think the support was drifting slowly on the ground.

[Majorjim!]

Very impressive indeed! The stuff you guys come up with astounds me. It's art.

[KSK]

9 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

Very impressive indeed! The stuff you guys come up with astounds me. It's art.

Couldn't agree more. It would be nice to see stuff like this get a shout out on Fanart Friday occasionally, as well as the more obvious artworks.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

This is absolutely insane. Well done. What keeps it so well synchronized?

[Aphobius]

3 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

This is absolutely insane. Well done. What keeps it so well synchronized?

Thank you!

It's having an escapement made out of 2 reaction wheels, you can see it at 0:08.

[klond]

 I'll have you know I've only watched this video like 20 times.  This is a serious investment of effort. 

 Followup to EpicSpaceTroll139's question - So does the trim on the escapement reaction wheels affect the accuracy?  I'm assuming they act kind of like a spring?

 

 

Edited April 10, 2017 by klond

[Aphobius]

1 hour ago, klond said:

 I'll have you know I've only watched this video like 20 times.  This is a serious investment of effort. 

 Followup to EpicSpaceTroll139's question - So does the trim on the escapement reaction wheels affect the accuracy?  I'm assuming they act kind of like a spring?

 

 

I've made it so I have to set the trim only once (rotated the probe cores in such a way that they spin in the correct direction when I decouple everything) and after that when I stage, the clock is starting.

To make it run faster or slower I adjust the Wheel Authority on the 2 reaction wheels of the escapement.

It's kinda strange how the escapement is working, in a real watch you have a balance wheel, but in KSP I wasn't able to make something similar to a balance wheel, so I invented that escapement.

It has 2 reaction wheels, one is spinning clockwise and the other one counterclockwise, let's name them A and B, when A is stuck in the escapement, B is rotating, it's releasing A and gets stuck, A starts rotating, it's releasing B and gets stuck and so on. If you go to 0:07 and change the speed to 0.25x, you'll be able to see this pretty well.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

3 minutes ago, Aphobius said:

<snip>

To make it run faster or slower I adjust the Wheel Authority on the 2 reaction wheels of the escapement.

It's kinda strange how the escapement is working, in a real watch you have a balance wheel, but in KSP I wasn't able to make something similar to a balance wheel, so I invented that escapement. <Snip>

Considering this, how long did it take you to tweak the reaction wheel authority to get it to be so accurate? Was there some kind of calculation you did to figure out what you needed?

[Aphobius]

3 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Considering this, how long did it take you to tweak the reaction wheel authority to get it to be so accurate? Was there some kind of calculation you did to figure out what you needed?

When I've made the escapement I've aimed for one second per tooth, with 12 teeth per wheel it was pretty close. To calibrate it, first I was comparing it's ticks to the game time, when a new minute was starting, I was starting to count the ticks of the escapement and after 60 ticks I was looking again at the game time and if more or less than 60 seconds have passed I was adjusting the Wheel Authority on the reaction wheels. This didn't took too long, since the Wheel Authority can be adjusted while the clock is running. But after that I've let it run for 1-2 hours a few times and made finer adjustments.

 

PS: Only one reaction wheel is keeping the time, it has 12 teeth and makes a complete rotation in 12 seconds.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

This is amazing! Is there any chance of a craft file?

[Aphobius]

50 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

This is amazing! Is there any chance of a craft file?

I've never shared my craft files, but it might be a little disappointing anyway, it has a lot of parts, so it runs in slow motion, everything in the video is speed up a lot.

I could make some pictures or another video to show in more detail how it's working.

[luizopiloto]

It looks like magic...

[Castille7]

Give me a week or two and I might have my head wrapped around this by then.........Very impressive work!!

Edited April 10, 2017 by Castille7