My microwave oven needs one of those little brass thingies. It is so frustrating to attempt a gourmet meal and find it ruined because the glass tray is rotating the wrong direction! :o)
Mechanical digital clocks were used for many years in British railway stations. They were operated by solenoids and clunked very loudly every second. I reckon they dated back to the 1980s and clunked away reliably for several decades so were very well made.
@@williamallen7836 A little later. They were part of the rebranding of the London and South East Sector as Network SouthEast in 1986, though Intercity used them too.
I remember when roll-a-deck style clocks were the norm and the wind up kitchen wall clock I was so happy when the vacuum Florescent display came out and solid state electronics. Then we had the first generation of LCD displays, and LED displays. The dot matrix displays and now we have the LED displays that can be made to say anything I still remember Crystal radios and the solid state two-way radios had plastic wheels with the numbers and you would push the buttons up or down to set the frequency. The crystal radios were very reliable but stuck to one frequency The first radio I bought that was LCD display and you could enter any frequency directly was the C156a Standard and I still have it. That radio cost me 250 dollars in the late 90s and it only did 144 to 174 MHz. Now, for 39 dollars you can buy a vx5 radio that does 25 khz to 999 MHz I thought the other companies would lower their prices when these new companies started selling in America, but they have not budge on their prices They charge 800 dollars for the same thing you can get for 39 dollars I don't know why they charge so much when they are making the radios for 10 dollars in China. The company that makes them is who started selling their radios in America so cheap.
We had one of these when I was a kid. It lived on top of our Magnavox console TV. It got a little tired as time went by and sometimes a segment or two wouldn't light until you tapped on it and you could hear the little motor humming away.
The version in this video is all mechanical so none of the segments light up. You must have had a different version. Fran has shown a version with neon lamps, maybe that's the one you had.
Nice! This is the same type of motor that's in my rolling ball clock. I replaced the motor twice. The first motor had a melted pinion gear, and by melted I'm sure you know what that's like, it was just jelly goo with about 3 teeth left. The second motor also failed. The third motor was actually the motor I only robbed the pinion gear out of. All these motors had the same kind of rotor but the 3rd motor had a different kind of plastic that the pinion was made out of. That one has lasted. The third motor came from a lawn sprinkler timer. I found tons of different models of these type motors with different speed gearboxes. None of the gear boxes are compatible but the pinion gear was the same in all of them.
When little plastic gears break, you can often buy a modifyable near-replacement from Stock Drive Products. You can modify bores and hubs, glue them together to make cluster gears, etc.
Very cool! Now you need to do a detailed disassembly and have all of the plastic gears 3d scanned so parts can now be made! You can either do it privately and fix lumitrons or run them off for people in kits.
I had one of these, I loved it! I won it at the Boardwalk at Seaside Heights back in 1978-1979. The only time I had a problem was when I went to Greece and didn't realize the frequency was 50hz. I was late for work my first day.
Memory unlocked. Such a ubiquitous item through the 70s, 80s, and even had mine into the 90s in my first house. Honestly it's probably in a storage box in this workroom somewhere.
I think I remember a relative having this exact clock, or one close to it! I remember watching the numbers change and hearing the gears grinding as the AC motor would turn the mechanism, and it would get louder when the numbers changed. I believe this was in about 1977.
long time ago i had the idea to build a large 7-segment clock-display to be visible from space. So, when a Google Earth syp satellite sees it, the exact time is captured.
Ther is always the "Luecke Farm," In eastern Texas - they cleared a piece of wooded land and left trees standing in kilometer-high letters spelling his name that is visible from space. 30° 4' 55"N 97° 8'30.31"W
Gotta love these last-ditch efforts to show that the old technology can still compete with the new technology. The best steam engines were built to compete with internal combustion engines, and the best airplanes were built to compete with jets.
It will be as accurate as the long term mains frequency. I think the power companies keep it accurate so clocks like these keep time. I.e. the mains frequency can vary a little in the short term but they keep the total number of cycles correct in the long term.
@@protoborg If that were the case electric clocks that get the time from the mains frequency wouldn't keep time, but they do despite the frequency varying a little as the load changes.
I used to have one of those mechanical digital clocks. Just before the alarm would go off you could hear it groaning as if the mechanism was in some kind tension. This would disturb my pet ferret, who would get under my covers and wake me up to kill the alarm before it could sound.
Could you get a cast of that cellulose gear, or some precision measurements? Seems like that would be helpful keeping these clocks running. Neat machine! 👍 Edit: Love the time lapse at the end.
I was thinking the same thing, should have taken measurements and counted the number of teeth while it's still in one piece. I've 3D printed plastic replacement gears for stuff, that one might be too small for 3D printing but could be machined out of something like delrin.
there is a spring powered mechanical watch like this. it has dials instead of a segmented display. that would be a bit much even for top watchmakers. you wind the thing and it tells you the time in decimals down to 5 minutes entirely mechanically. i think it also contains a minute repeater. (watch people will know why that sentence is kind of funny)
Very Cool! What a fascinating approach to the display. My fumble fingers couldn't handle that disassembly though. I don't have any hammers small enough.,
Not sure if the pretended to be a LED display in their era but ... these are so cool in the way they are. And those digits are gigantic, not sure if it could achive that with led technology from thast period.
if you search for "intermatic mechanical timer motors" some of the hits are for a little metal oblong case, has an oval top, all of those have a gear box on top of the same kind of motor with that tiny pinion gear inside. Some of these match. you can rob the pinion gear and sometimes the whole rotor will match.
my dad had the 1970s model of this clock when I was a kid. different model, more primitive... it did not use the 7 panel digits, instead it flipped over paper masks every minute.
I wonder if this is the same Tamura Co. that made all the audio transformers that are now so highly sought after for tube amplifiers (and other applications)?
Liked this video, neat that the Japanese made a mechanical digital clock, very ingenious design. I cringe at the grease they use, it gets hard over time and freezes up the moving parts, seen this a lot in tape recorders made in Japan.
If you take some measurements of that little gear it could totally be printed on a resin printer. Happy to make some and drop in the mail for you if you can get me measurements Heck, could probably recreate that whole gear train if you really wanted to.
I remember when GE sold an LED digital clock in the 1970's. It was mechanical crap, and the small print indicated that LED stood for "Light Emitting Device"! What a sleazy company.
I've got a flip clock with a "tuning fork" mechanism, the upshot of which it makes a 400Hz whine which is Damned annoying and I hate the thing. I can even hear it through a closed door ☹
"New In Box" was a bit deceptive. "New, except for when I mangled the plastic tab, took apart the clock and motor, and gunked it up with grease." The "In Box" was true, so there's that.
There's a lot of confusion here. Digital circuits and digital displays are not the same thing, they are just vaguely generally related. Digital circuits use discrete logic to calculate the output that will be displayed and digital displays show the readout in a discrete fashion as specific numerals. This is unquestionably a digital clock.
Since you have a full set of perfectly intact gears here, couldn't you just have them modeled and 3D printed, or find new gears of the same size for purchase? That way you'd never have to worry about the gears disintegrating, especially if you had them machined out of brass.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
Love these genius mechanisms. Glad you could get it sorted!
My microwave oven needs one of those little brass thingies. It is so frustrating to attempt a gourmet meal and find it ruined because the glass tray is rotating the wrong direction! :o)
I hate my food spinning counter clockwise. Gets all loose!
Yeah, you just get a counter meal instead. (Australians will get it.) 😁
@@stuartirwin3779Or, put the food in upside down.
I love the pattern the seconds disc makes.
Mechanical digital clocks were used for many years in British railway stations. They were operated by solenoids and clunked very loudly every second.
I reckon they dated back to the 1980s and clunked away reliably for several decades so were very well made.
remember them well, a sound of my childhood very much missed sometimes
London Victoria still has at least one one each platform, mostly still working.
Likely from before 1980.
@@williamallen7836 A little later. They were part of the rebranding of the London and South East Sector as Network SouthEast in 1986, though Intercity used them too.
I remember when roll-a-deck style clocks were the norm and the wind up kitchen wall clock
I was so happy when the vacuum Florescent display came out and solid state electronics.
Then we had the first generation of LCD displays, and LED displays.
The dot matrix displays and now we have the LED displays that can be made to say anything
I still remember Crystal radios and the solid state two-way radios had plastic wheels with the numbers and you would push the buttons up or down to set the frequency.
The crystal radios were very reliable but stuck to one frequency
The first radio I bought that was LCD display and you could enter any frequency directly was the C156a Standard and I still have it.
That radio cost me 250 dollars in the late 90s and it only did 144 to 174 MHz.
Now, for 39 dollars you can buy a vx5 radio that does 25 khz to 999 MHz
I thought the other companies would lower their prices when these new companies started selling in America, but they have not budge on their prices
They charge 800 dollars for the same thing you can get for 39 dollars
I don't know why they charge so much when they are making the radios for 10 dollars in China.
The company that makes them is who started selling their radios in America so cheap.
Oil versus grease. I bet it was working when the seller repaired it. Congrats on the repair, looking forward to the little nudge on this segment ;-)
We had one of these when I was a kid. It lived on top of our Magnavox console TV. It got a little tired as time went by and sometimes a segment or two wouldn't light until you tapped on it and you could hear the little motor humming away.
The version in this video is all mechanical so none of the segments light up. You must have had a different version. Fran has shown a version with neon lamps, maybe that's the one you had.
Nice! This is the same type of motor that's in my rolling ball clock. I replaced the motor twice. The first motor had a melted pinion gear, and by melted I'm sure you know what that's like, it was just jelly goo with about 3 teeth left. The second motor also failed. The third motor was actually the motor I only robbed the pinion gear out of. All these motors had the same kind of rotor but the 3rd motor had a different kind of plastic that the pinion was made out of. That one has lasted. The third motor came from a lawn sprinkler timer. I found tons of different models of these type motors with different speed gearboxes. None of the gear boxes are compatible but the pinion gear was the same in all of them.
When little plastic gears break, you can often buy a modifyable near-replacement from Stock Drive Products. You can modify bores and hubs, glue them together to make cluster gears, etc.
aaauurg, needed another 30 seconds to see the hours tick over ! I did like the face-off animation under the credits though.
We need an entire night of this marvelous clock !
Very cool! Now you need to do a detailed disassembly and have all of the plastic gears 3d scanned so parts can now be made! You can either do it privately and fix lumitrons or run them off for people in kits.
Love it! It's like old railway station clocks and my strobe tuner had a baby
My grandfather had one of these, I remember being fascinated by it when we visited his house in the 1980s.
Wow In the future
@@carloscollomps1552 it was a typo, genius!
I had one of these, I loved it! I won it at the Boardwalk at Seaside Heights back in 1978-1979.
The only time I had a problem was when I went to Greece and didn't realize the frequency was 50hz. I was late for work my first day.
Now THIS is my kind of video!!!😊
Memory unlocked. Such a ubiquitous item through the 70s, 80s, and even had mine into the 90s in my first house. Honestly it's probably in a storage box in this workroom somewhere.
Excellant repair Fran! I think you are really good at fixing things like this! Thank You Michael J
Taking that motor assembly and gearbox apart to fix it was awesomely Fran.
I think I remember a relative having this exact clock, or one close to it! I remember watching the numbers change and hearing the gears grinding as the AC motor would turn the mechanism, and it would get louder when the numbers changed. I believe this was in about 1977.
long time ago i had the idea to build a large 7-segment clock-display to be visible from space.
So, when a Google Earth syp satellite sees it, the exact time is captured.
ask batman to build you one.
Ther is always the "Luecke Farm," In eastern Texas - they cleared a piece of wooded land and left trees standing in kilometer-high letters spelling his name that is visible from space.
30° 4' 55"N 97° 8'30.31"W
@@franklittle8124 thanks for that, I have viewed :)
"What's in the box" wasn't something David Mills was ready to ask. 😬📦
Gotta love these last-ditch efforts to show that the old technology can still compete with the new technology.
The best steam engines were built to compete with internal combustion engines, and the best airplanes were built to compete with jets.
Question: Are you going to send in the Warranty Card? 😁
From what I've found online,
the movement's accuracy is 1 second within 25-30 years.
That kind of impressed me.
It will be as accurate as the long term mains frequency. I think the power companies keep it accurate so clocks like these keep time. I.e. the mains frequency can vary a little in the short term but they keep the total number of cycles correct in the long term.
@@nophead They care nothing for clocks. They just don't want their customers complaining about their stuff failing due to incorrect power cycles.
@@protoborg If that were the case electric clocks that get the time from the mains frequency wouldn't keep time, but they do despite the frequency varying a little as the load changes.
"grease is not the word".....lol...too funny....great video as always....R
*Fran, may I bring to your attention the Numechron Mechanical Digital Clock. Rotating Cylinders.*
Flip clocks are a different category. Done those too. But this is an actual 7-segment display!
@@FranLab Not flip cards. 6 sided, 10 sided and 12 sided cylinders, like mechanical auto odometers.
Very coo clock. love the blooming flower on it
A good save, that is pure retro.
I used to have one of those mechanical digital clocks. Just before the alarm would go off you could hear it groaning as if the mechanism was in some kind tension. This would disturb my pet ferret, who would get under my covers and wake me up to kill the alarm before it could sound.
Engagement for the engagement god!
Could you get a cast of that cellulose gear, or some precision measurements? Seems like that would be helpful keeping these clocks running. Neat machine! 👍 Edit: Love the time lapse at the end.
I was thinking the same thing, should have taken measurements and counted the number of teeth while it's still in one piece. I've 3D printed plastic replacement gears for stuff, that one might be too small for 3D printing but could be machined out of something like delrin.
That font on the box is so cool
Thats the stuff I want to watch.THX.
No BlaBla talking, showing Your face.
Imagine back in the day trying to design something like this. My head hurts just thinking about it!
Very cool.
there is a spring powered mechanical watch like this. it has dials instead of a segmented display. that would be a bit much even for top watchmakers.
you wind the thing and it tells you the time in decimals down to 5 minutes entirely mechanically. i think it also contains a minute repeater. (watch people will know why that sentence is kind of funny)
Very Cool! What a fascinating approach to the display. My fumble fingers couldn't handle that disassembly though. I don't have any hammers small enough.,
Mechanical seven segment clock! (Even the old flip-clocks were digital).
I love a happy ending! That's so satisfying. Thanks for sharing, Fran!
The mask isn't centered on the starburst. I bet that's what makes it appear to sort of rotate.
Did you notice at the first start-up after assembly, it started momentarily in the wrong direction and that brass thingy did its job perfectly?
I wonder if someone could scan/model the gearsets and gearbox and 3D print replacements. It'd be nice to get more of these running
Not sure if the pretended to be a LED display in their era but ... these are so cool in the way they are. And those digits are gigantic, not sure if it could achive that with led technology from thast period.
Very cool!
if you search for "intermatic mechanical timer motors" some of the hits are for a little metal oblong case, has an oval top, all of those have a gear box on top of the same kind of motor with that tiny pinion gear inside. Some of these match. you can rob the pinion gear and sometimes the whole rotor will match.
also search for "grainger" gives more models
just a quick callout for that Devo LP!!!
As a kid in the 1960s, I had a clock-radio with one of those flipping-leaf-type numerical displays - would they be considered "digital"?
Yes it displayed digits so it was digital.
my dad had the 1970s model of this clock when I was a kid.
different model, more primitive... it did not use the 7 panel digits, instead it flipped over paper masks every minute.
Wire nuts! The sign of the amateur bodger. Great video, Fran.
I wonder if this is the same Tamura Co. that made all the audio transformers that are now so highly sought after for tube amplifiers (and other applications)?
Most likely yes.
Legend's have already watched this live🎉😂
Liked this video, neat that the Japanese made a mechanical digital clock, very ingenious design. I cringe at the grease they use, it gets hard over time and freezes up the moving parts, seen this a lot in tape recorders made in Japan.
Awesome! 😎🤘☮️
If you take some measurements of that little gear it could totally be printed on a resin printer. Happy to make some and drop in the mail for you if you can get me measurements
Heck, could probably recreate that whole gear train if you really wanted to.
some people have amazing skills i realize it sometimes
I'd probably have a go at 3D printing replacement gears.
why don't get that cog 3d analyzed and printed and fix the broken one
Looking like 24h is supported too 🤔
Amazing device…
Stamford, CT. Wow.
Copy the gears while they are stil intact, maybe some silicone molding, like the one they use for jewelery.
There are so many typos on the warranty card 😮😊
I remember when GE sold an LED digital clock in the 1970's. It was mechanical crap, and the small print indicated that LED stood for "Light Emitting Device"! What a sleazy company.
uma autentica relíquia, já dei like.
I've got a flip clock with a "tuning fork" mechanism,
the upshot of which it makes a 400Hz whine which is Damned annoying and I hate the thing.
I can even hear it through a closed door ☹
"New In Box" was a bit deceptive. "New, except for when I mangled the plastic tab, took apart the clock and motor, and gunked it up with grease."
The "In Box" was true, so there's that.
Crazy complex for a clock. 'Digital' is a misnomer for these for sure.
It displays digits, and that makes it digital.
@@FranLab And it's display emits light so it's an LED. :)
That's some classic marketing speak.
It doesn't need to be electronic to be digital. For example, hydraulic and pneumatic digital circuits exist.
There's a lot of confusion here. Digital circuits and digital displays are not the same thing, they are just vaguely generally related. Digital circuits use discrete logic to calculate the output that will be displayed and digital displays show the readout in a discrete fashion as specific numerals. This is unquestionably a digital clock.
@@AnEntropyFan yup... I think of it that way too.
noooo, i'd have left the cable and wire twist 'as-is', but used an extension cable 😉
You should make a mold of the gear before it turns to goop again
This is my favorite type of video from Fran Lab. Thanks for sharing!
Almost fixed the red dot didn’t quite keep up with the spiral.
Yay! Another Fran clock video - these mechanical clocks are brilliant o look at.
How about making spare cogs with 3d printing. Would that not made it possible to get those two clocks (fix the old on and this one) preserved?
Nicely done. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time hoping you'd get get it working.
The digital clock at home:
Since you have a full set of perfectly intact gears here, couldn't you just have them modeled and 3D printed, or find new gears of the same size for purchase? That way you'd never have to worry about the gears disintegrating, especially if you had them machined out of brass.
cool
The 'old way' to repair those things and motors.... just spray a little WD40 ... ;-) works wonders for a short while, sometimes very short.
I wonder if Randi Rain could fix the gearbox, because she makes gears
an amazing piece of engineering Fran, thankyou
Extremely cool clock, and probably the most unreliable implementation they could have conceived.
Great work
the joy in that laugh was 100% worth the lead up
A fascinating mechanism.
How can we see red digits if it's not plugged in?
Great job Fran!
You finally have one that's running now.
Yep.
I've seen some recent videos of Frankie Valli on tour. He's 90.
glad you got one that you could get working !
Raaahh!!! Awesome job!
Well done Fran.
(ɷ◡ɷ ) Neat, and not so greazy.
Good job
nice 😊
Trans icon. Love your brain fran
Japan has both 50Hz and 60Hz.
Commented too soon.
was trying to count the number of cogs on the replaceable gear. counted one cog with 14T but that's not a common factor of 50/60.
@@carlosgaspar8447 many clocks do not have integer gear ratios
@@jmcarp0 i'm not sure how you can avoid integer gears with this clock.
Ya just can't get carbon tetra chloride any more 😅
❤️🔥FRAN❤️🔥
💜💜💜💜🖖🖖
New-ish, Includes Box. Eh, it's eBay, you get what you get.
I like your stop watch. ⏱🙂