Parametric Graham Escapement by syvwlch

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

The escapement is the part of a mechanical clock that keeps the pendulum swinging despite friction losses by imparting it with the potential energy of a weight, or spring, while transforming the regular swings of the pendulum into regular increments of rotation of the escapement wheel, which can then drive a gear train to show seconds, minutes, hours, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement
A Graham escapement is also known as a dead-beat escapement because it does not force the wheel to move anti-clockwise during the parts of the cycle when no impulse is being given to the pendulum, i.e. it produces no recoil.
http://www.abbeyclock.com/bbigrhm.html
This Openscad design should allow you to create a variety of Graham escapements, with different numbers of teeth for the wheel, different escapement gaps, etc... It is fully parameterized and commented.
I created it as an exercise in understanding escapements, and Openscad, and plan to eventually build up to a full clock. I'm amazed by how far, how fast I got with Openscad, BTW, it rocks! :-)