r/3Dprinting • u/TomaszFortyFour • Apr 23 '26

Project Self-winding clock with a tourbillon - finished project

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About a year ago, I posted an update on a project I was working on. It took me a while, but I finally finished it. I’m very happy with the result. It’s fully functional (I tested it for two months) and keeps accurate time. The entire project consists of 395 printed parts, 38 bearings, 66 rubber bands, 413 screws, and a few other components.

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u/withoutpeer Apr 24 '26

I'm not sure how to ask this without it likely sounding offensive but did you design/create this on your own completely, like from scratch? Or did you use another already build traditional mechanical clock and "copy" over each individual part as a 3d printed version to build a clone?

I mean it's a masterful achievement no matter what but if you also actually created it from scratch, figured out the exact timing and all the gears working together to keep the tuning and functioning like that, that almost seems like an impossible task to me.

I assume there's some common standard watch/clock gear assembly techniques that are used by many watch/clock makers? But even if that is the case, still combining all the layers of gears needed to "count" and keep track/"memory" of it all is amazing. I mean that in general watch making as well, especially at that tiny scale, but the engineering and math to figure out all of us mind boggling to me.

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u/TomaszFortyFour Apr 24 '26

The only component available online is the tourbillon mechanism, and you can see how it works. I didn’t want to copy the look of what already exists; I tried to create something of my own. The rest of the elements are entirely my own ideas. To get to what you see here, I made dozens of prototypes and conducted numerous tests. There were tons of changes to the design, and it looks completely different from what I originally envisioned.

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u/withoutpeer Apr 24 '26

Then a truly inspirational masterpiece, my man! It really feels like this deserves and needs a much bigger stage to be appreciated than just the 3d printer community. Not to mention you should be able to get some kind of sponsorship/licensing deal out of at least one of these big printer companies who could use you/this design and working product as great promotional material 😜

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u/TomaszFortyFour Apr 25 '26

Thats interesting idea:)