Watchmaking and Lunation Moon Phase Gears Update

 Watchmaking and Lunation Moon Phase Gears Update

Albrecht 0-3mm drill chuck for using the tiniest of drill bits (1/64 ; 0.33mm ; .4mm ; etc.).

Watch I'm making from scratch. Here is the 58mm main plate with 1 mm lip around it. I cut in a 0.25mm ledge for the dial to sit on.

Here is operation #4 on my  lathe: putting in the 0.25mm lip that is 0.5mmm deep:

Finished main plate:

Main plate and slightly smaller (but thicker) piece that will be the bridge:

Lunar moon phase gear train mock-up model. The red lines are the axles. I can use any size/pitch/module gears as long as each set that touches each other match. 

The 9, 9 and 35 must mesh to each other only.

The 11 and 40 must mesh to each other only.

The 17 and 71 much mesh to each other only.

So, the 11 and 40 could be tiny little gears that cellphones use to vibrate when they ring, while the 17 and 71 could be huge gears out of a car's transmission--or vise-versa. 

The center bore holes of each gear doesn't really matter. With the lathe I can make an axle that is as thin as a toothpick on one end and as thick as a baseball bat on the other.

So, I'll be searching through my random supplies for gears.

Watchmaking Machinery Part 1

 

Watchmaking Machinery Part 1

Here is my new Taig Microlathe II with a binocular microscope attached to it. 

The microscope is a Swift 2x/4x mounted on an arm that I made out of plate steel and aluminum tubing. It has an LED illuminator and almost the entire microscope is made out of metal!

Taig lathes are still MADE IN AMERICA and are extremely high precision instruments.

View through the microscope at 2x:

Actual size view:

The microscope is removable for safe keeping. I mounted the lathe onto a filecabinet drawer type thing and filled it with the accessories: milling attachment, tools, measurement devices, etc.

The initial order to Taig was for:

1017#3 Starter Set #3 - Base + 5C Headstock       

1096 Unground tool bit 1/4" square       

1170 Extra Tool Post       6             

1171 Back Tool Post        2             

1110 Slitting saw arbor                 

1232 1/4" Diameter Milling Cutter           

1230A 1/16 dia Milling Cutter    

1230C 1/8 dia.Milling Cutter      

1111 Hi Speed Slitting Saw          

1152 Die Holder for Tailstock     

1224 Fly Cutter

1210 Radius Turner        

1038 4 inch swivel joint tool rest (wood turners)

1190 Steady Rest            

1225 Milling Vice             

1173 T Bar Cutoff Tool  

1200 Top Slide Mounts  1220 Milling attachment              

300-82 (T-Bar Cutoff Mount)      

Tons of other tools, bits, bit steel to grind my own cutters, calipers, dial indicators, raw metal stock, etc. are on their way too.

The first learning goal is to take an existing watch movement and replace it piece-by-piece with pieces that I manufacture. Replacing steel with brass, until I've made a complete movement. See you in a few years...

The chosen movement is an ETA 6498 M03 that was introduced in 1950. It's a pocket watch movement. ETA's website is awful and always down for service. If you need the tech specs for this movement do a search for "'CT_6498-2_FDE_482480_08" and there will be a few results.