River Clock Project

My friend Christian and I built a lovely river clock. This clock features a resin poured river, laser cut numbers, and a CNC routed base!

Software:

-Fusion AutoDesk 360

-Vcarve Pro

-LightBurn

Material List:

-15''x15x.875'' piece of wood - we re-used a piece of old wooden shelving, its always good to use extra materials you have lying around!

-Epoxy Resin

-Blue Resin Dye

-MDF (for the numbers)

-Clock Mechanism (linked on previous slide)

Machines:

-CNC Router

-Router

Christian and I had the idea to build a clock. We wanted it to be unique, and put our own spin on it. After working a lot with a CNC router, we decided that was going to be our main tool. We formed a couple sketches and thought of a couple of ideas.

After we finished our sketches, we used Vcarve Pro to begin designing our clock. We first started by making the circle the size we wanted. It was a diameter of 14 inches. We then created a river shape that we liked and added that as well. We also added the hole for the clock mechanism, and the space for the battery, but we will get to that later. I also attached the file that we created, if you just want to use that one!

After completing our design we took our 15 by 15 piece of wood shelving and cut out our river. By cutting out the river first we were able to get the resin all the way to the edge, and not worry about spilling any resin over. The machining time was not long, and our clock idea was born.

After downloading our file to Fusion AutoDesk 360 we were able to see the volume of our river. We converted the volume to milliliters so we knew how much resin to pour. We then mixed our clear resin with blue dye, and thoroughly mixed them together. We then poured the resin in and used a blow torch to help dry it up.

After pouring the resin we cut out the clock, and the hole in the back for the battery. We did this by using a profile for the main clock shape, and a pocket for the battery hole!

After cutting out our circle, and pouring our resin, we used a router to really round those edges. This was really cool because it allowed the resin to come all the way to the edge and give a really unique river look!

After having a finished river we needed to think about how we wanted to do our numbers. We decided that we would cut an additional piece of MDF the same diameter as our original clock that we could laser cut the numbers into, and then properly line them all up. We then re-ran our CNC cut to make the circle, and then laser cut our numbers on the board. We imported our Vcarve file into LightBurn and chose a font that we liked.

After we finished laser cutting our numbers, we punched them out, and spray painted them black. Our numbers were a little brittle so a couple of them we made a few times!

We purchased a clock hand and battery off of Amazon which has multiple different hand lengths, and looks great!

https://www.amazon.com/Include-Movement-Mechanism-...