Ministry of Education and Youth of Moldova

Technical University of Moldova

The Faculty of Engineering and Management in Electronics and
Telecommunications

Report
Theme: Clockwork (windup) mechanisms

Made by student Botnaru Ion

gr.IMTC-151

Checked by Ababii Mariana

Chisinau 2015
Plan:

1. Introduction
2. What is clockwork?
3. Adding and storing energy. The mainspring
4. Using energy
5. About resistance

Key words:
 Clockwork - the mechanism of a clock.
 Clock - an instrument for measuring and recording time, especially by mechanical means, usually
with hands or changing numbers to indicate the hour and minute: not designed to be worn or
carried about.
 Windup - a mechanical object, as a toy or wristwatch, that is driven by a spring or similar
mechanism that must be wound.
 Spring - A device, such as a coil of wire, that returns to its original shape after being compressed or
stretched. Because of their ability to return to their original shape, springs are used to store energy,
as in mechanical clocks, and to absorb or lessen energy.
 Mainspring - the principal spring in a mechanism, as in a watch
 Antikythera mechanism - an ancient analog computer designed to predict astronomical positions
and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes.
 Resistance - the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding.
 Introduction

Batteries not included—as a child, those are just about the most disappointing words you can read when you
buy a new toy. In the 1970s and before, that wasn't such a big issue because the vast majority of toys worked an
entirely different way. Instead of using electricity stored chemically in batteries, they relied on windup power and
clockwork mechanisms. Clockwork has certainly stood the test of time: the earliest clockwork device, known as the
Antikythera mechanism, dates from ancient Greece and is thought to be at least 2000 years old.

What is clockwork?

Clockwork means, literally, "working like a clock"—that much is obvious! But most modern clocks
are electronic: powered by electricity and regulated by quartz crystals, they have relatively few moving
parts. If you want to understand clockwork, you need to understand how clocks used to work in the days
when you wound them with a key. Like an old-fashioned clock, a clockwork device is completely
mechanical and has these essential parts:

 A key (or crown) you wind to add energy.

 A spiral spring to store the energy you add with the key
 A set of gears through which the spring's energy is released. The gears control how quickly (or
slowly) a clockwork machine can do things, but they also control how much force it can produce
(for climbing inclines, perhaps).
 A mechanism the gears drive that makes the device do useful or interesting things. In a clock, the
mechanism is the set of hands that sweep around the dial to tell you the time.

Adding and storing energy. The mainspring

What happens when you wind? If you've ever wound a clockwork toy, you'll know that the key
(sometimes it's a little plastic knob called a crown) can be quite stiff and hard to turn. Why is that? When
you turn the key, you're tightening a sturdy metal spring, called the mainspring, and storing up energy; the
mainspring is the mechanical equivalent of a battery. With each turn of the screw, your fingers are doing
work (as we say in science): they're moving a force (pushing against the spring's tendency to expand)
through a distance—in other words, compressing the spring.
 Since you're doing work with your fingers, you're using energy, but that energy doesn't vanish into
thin air: it's stored in the spring as potential energy. Windup clocks and watches are designed to have
springs that will store enough energy to keep the mechanism working for a day or more.

Using energy

Virtually all clockwork devices have gears, which are wheels with teeth that mesh together. There
are generally two reasons why you use them: to make a wheel go faster (with less force) or to make it go
more slowly (with more force). Clockwork mechanisms use gears in both these ways. In a pocket watch,
gears transform the speed of a rotating shaft so it drives the second hand at one speed, the minute hand at
1/60 that speed, and the hour hand at 1/3600 the speed.

About resistance

If you wind up a clockwork car as much as you can, then let the key go, without putting the car on
the ground, you'll hear the gears inside the mechanism screech and squeal as the spring releases its energy
amazingly quickly. Since there's very little resistance except friction (the rubbing force between touching
surfaces) in the gearbox, there's nothing really for the mechanism to work against and it can deliver energy
very fast. Put it on a rug and the energy is delivered much more slowly (and quietly). Now the spring has to
work against the resistance of the fabric, which works like a brake on the wheels and the gears that power
them.
Sources

 http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-clockwork-works.html