DIY Artist Paint Palette Clock

Hi friends!

I am a college student who identifies as a jack (er...jill?) of many trades. One of those is painting...and another new one for me lately is 3D printing!

So, when I walked into my college painting studio to discover that we had no wall clock, what was I supposed to do other than spend an exorbitant amount of time designing an appropriately artsy clock body on Tinkercad? I mean, it's not like standard mass-manufactured clocks are easily accessible and cheap, right?

I do nothing the easy way.

I obtained a clock mechanism, opened Tinkercad and started messing around, and ended up with a lovely designed clock that has what is hopefully a permanent home in the painting studio classroom. I share a tutorial below in case you want to try making your own and even make spinoffs that suit your needs well. Happy creating!

You will need:

• Access to Tinkercad by Autodesk, https://www.tinkercad.com/
• PrusaSlicer or another 3D slicing program like Cura
• A computer with decent RAM (this model gets complicated by the end)
• 3D printer - I used a Creality Ender 3
• PLA filament (I used white because I thought it looked the most realistic, like the cheap plastic paint palettes in most art classrooms) ~300g
• A clock mechanism - I bought this one from Joann Fabrics. 3/8" is what I used for this body, but if you have a different length mechanism, just make sure you adjust the thickness of your clock face accordingly.
• Acrylic paint and a cheap brush to decorate the wells at the end!
• Ruler and/or calipers
• Glue
• A battery for your clock (usually AA)

At this point, if you're like me, you're going to want to jump right in and start making your clock.

Stop. Breathe. Instead, put the horse before the cart and *measuring* all your related parts first.

You will want to measure two things in particular: your clock mechanism, and your printer bed. I printed my clock diagonally across the bed to get it as large as possible, but it was still a tight squeeze. Measure the bed ahead of time, leaving a roomy buffer area to make sure your nozzle tool path can reach.

As for the clock mechanism, you need to know the height, width, and depth of the black mechanism box so that you know how big to make the slot for it to fit inside the back of the clock. You also need to measure the shaft (the little column on the front that will hold the clock hands.) You need to know the diameter of this to know how big to make a hole for it to fit through to the front of the clock. You also need to know the length of the thicker (bumpy) threaded portion so that you make the clock face thin enough that it will fit far enough to hold the clock hands.

My mechanism was a little less than 70mm height and width, and a bit less than 20mm deep, so I used these measurements. The shaft was about 8-9mm across, so I went with 9 for the diameter measurement. Finally, as the package said, I had about 10mm of threading on the shaft so my clock face would have to be 10mm thick or less.

Start with a nice shallow cylinder shape. Mine had somewhat random dimensions, as long as it would fit on my 3D printer plate; importantly, make it 35 mm thick. Make it round by opting for the maximum 64 sides. I beveled mine some because I like the look of a bevel, but it's up to you (and actually the bevel made it a tad more complicated for me down the road, so go figure.)

There's two holes that you need to add to shape this into that classic art palette shape: a thumb hole, and a scribble line to take the chunk out of the side. I had to tinker with the scribble quite a bit to get it the shape I wanted, and I show you above what I ended up with. The thumb hole will just be a cylinder. Make sure these holes go all the way through the clock with room to spare.

You also need to put a hole in the middle of where the clock face will be for the clock mechanism shaft. I made mine 9 mm across, a bit wider in diameter than the shaft that I measured earlier. Again, make it extra long (deep) so that it goes all the way through the clock face with room to spare.

Turn all of these to holes.

Use the text feature to add a 12, 3, 6, and 9 holes. The size and font is up to you. I picked Sans and added a bevel so that these would be round in the bottom, like paint wells. Important: Make the depth 16 mm. Place them roughly in the right spot, we'll align later!

Now we'll make the paint wells for the other "number" spots! Okay, first a short aside to go find a protractor. There may be a better way to do this, but this is how I made it work!

Go to the thing at this link: Protractor by Sarawut Thanapluem. Click "Copy and Tinker", then copy paste that shape into your clock file. Lay it on top of the clock face, centered with the center hole. This is temporary, but I use it as a fantastic tool!

Add half spheres, flipped upside down: 20mmx20mm, 8mm deep. These should be at 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 120 degrees, and so on. As you can see above, I didn't put a well at the 5 o'clock (150 degree) spot because it was going to overlap the edge of the palette, but that is fine. 5 o'clock is implied.

Rotate the protractor and keep going. 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 10, 11. Then you can delete the protractor if you'd like.

As you can see in this photo, I also wanted more paint wells to *complete the look*, so I copied some of those 8mm half spheres and widened them, then placed them down by the thumb hole.

If you're a tad perfectionist like me, this might be a good idea to align and straighten up everything. I aligned the 9 and 3 with each other, then aligned the 12 and the 6; align all of these numbers with the center shaft hole. I grouped all the numbers.

I then aligned the 2 and 4 holes, the 4 and 8, the 7 and 11, and the 10 and 2; mostly this was just to refine my circle. I then grouped all the circles together. Align this with the center hole, and the numbers.

Another thing you need to align: the bottom of all of the holes. I show an image above of how to do that using the align tool. Make sure you can see all the holes on the top of the clock face still - the goal is for the tops of the half sphere holes to be flush (sort of tie-dye looking) with the face of the clock. That, and aligning the bottoms of the half sphere holes with the numbers, should create even depth of all the "paint wells."

There are two important things (holes, duh) on the back of the clock: the opening for the clock mechanism, and the hanger for putting this up on a wall nail.

First, the clock mechanism opening. Get the measurements from step 1 and make sure that you create a box that is 20mm in depth, and with height and width that leaves a few millimeters around the clock mechanism. I made mine 60mmx60mm. Center this with the center shaft hole.

As far as the nail hole: I owe a debt to Jeremy Haynes, aka DeadGlider, on Thingiverse for his hanger design. Download his .STL file, import it to the Tinkercad document, and flip it around upside down until it looks like the above photo. Shove it 3 mm into the clock bottom (just until you can't see the teeth, but no more) and turn it into a hole. Center this with the box below, so that it is towards the middle top of the clock.

To save on filament as well as make my clock lighter and give it a nice streamlined, off-the-wall look, I wanted to trim out some of the spare material on the back.

By now you have noticed I love holes.

I did this with a large tube, which I turned into a hole. The tube is 20mm in depth, and ~290mm by ~250mm dimensions; the important dimension is the inside, which should leave room around the clock box and the hanger hole but also be larger than the sides of the clock face.

The tube, as shown in the above photo, has a radius of 10, a wall thickness of 5, and the maximum sides of 64 to get it as round as possible. Finally, it should be flush with the bottom of the clock.

It is about time to group all of my holes with my solids.

BUT FIRST I saved my original document - we're not touching that in case we need to go back. So from your dashboard, click on the gear and duplicate your design. Give it a title like Palette Clock Combined, or Palette Clock Top if you want to streamline the next step.

Now, go to the new document copy and DEEP BREATH select all the things (CTRL-A). Then hit the group button. If your computer is like mine, it will now shudder and say "I'm sorry, you used HOW MANY HOLES?" and the answer for me was like 19+. But give it a moment, compliment it on how much RAM it has and how sweet a computer it is, and it'll load. Now look at what you made, doesn't it start to look like a real thing?

I wanted to print my clock with minimal supports, because who likes those? So I planned to split the back and front of my clock into two pieces to print in two stages.

To make sure they would fit together right, I included pegs. You don't have to do this at all, but I wanted to do it (plus it's so satisfying when you take both parts off the print bed and they just click together, et voila.....ahh.)

Anyway, you're going to need some cylinders. 5mm x 5mm x 25mm tall. I used four, originally, but honestly this was tricky and you really only need maybe two, just to make everything line up right. Place them on the bottom in the space between the edge of the clock back, and the mechanism hole. DO NOT GROUP THEM WITH THE CLOCK - yet.

Per the above low-support goal, I separated my clock body into two parts. I did this by first going to the dashboard and duplicating the file, then name one "Palette Clock Top" and the other "Palette Clock Bottom."

This will separate them into two separate Tinkercad documents.

Once you have those documents, use large box holes to cut off the respective bottom and top; for instance, as shown on "Palette Clock Top", make a large, 25mm thick box that overlaps the entire bottom of the clock but not the clock face. Group this hole with the clock (but not the pegs!) and that will effectively cut the bottom off the clock. Do the inverse of this to cut the clock face off the bottom.

Ok, before you print, you need to finish the peg holes!

On the Clock Top:

There may be a better way to do this, but the way I do it: duplicate each peg. Make the duplicated peg (shown here in pink) 6mm x 6mm, which is bigger than the inner one, and center align it with the original peg. Delete the original peg, turn the new one into a hole, and shove it into the clock face (just not all the way through.) Just don't move the x or y location of the pegs or they won't align with the other piece.

On the Clock Bottom:

This is easier. Make the pegs stick out just a small bit - maybe 3-4 mm - and group the pegs and the clock bottom. Again, don't move the x or y location of the pegs - only edit the depth.

Export to STL or whatever file type you need to print it for your software/printer.

I sliced these at 0.20 layer height, 0.4 mm nozzle, 15% infill I think. I did turn on supports on the bottom piece in order to avoid sagging in the hanger bit, but you might be fine without! Make sure that you turn the larger clock face/top so that it fits on the plate.

This was so fun to watch. My favorite thing about the Ender 3's is that they sound like Star Wars droids when they move. It's the little things.

Preheat, level your plate, load white filament, print from media. All that good stuff. If you've read this far, you may know how to do this, but I can also direct you to some great videos here: https://youtu.be/h-1trfd3MCg

Warning - put some glue because you want a good stick, but seriously don't put too much glue under the clock face. It has so much flat contact with the plate that it will actually be pretty difficult to remove later - I learned that the hard way.

Now it's time to put all the pieces together!

Remove the two parts from the printer bed (for that flat face, I turned the bed up to 80°C to loosen/soften it slightly.)

Snap them together, using a bit of glue around the pegs and the smooth parts to make sure they'll go together.

Now place the clock mechanism body into the hole in the back, with the shaft going through to the front if all has gone well! Follow package directions to assemble the clock hands together. Add a battery!

It's a paint palette, sorta. It has to have paint! Plus the paint helps the numbers stand out better, making the clock easier to read.

I went with a classic color wheel, but you could totally make this fit any color scheme. The sky is the limit!

Move the clock hands out of the way, or take them off. Then squirt small amounts of paint into each well, as if you were really using this palette! I used a small brush to get the paint in the more narrow number wells, then left splashes of color around, as well as mixed colors, to add to the realism. Acrylic is a plastic-based paint, so if you leave the clock sitting flat for a couple hours or overnight, the paint will harden like you left it.

After this dries, go find a wall and a nail, and hang up your clock!

This is what I have! I would love, though, to see what you come up with. There are absolutely small improvements and remixes and edits that could be made to this, but I'm really proud of how it turned out, especially given this project was intended to teach myself more about Tinkercad!

In case you want to skip some of the above steps but tinker with my design, I've attached my original two resulting .stl files.