Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock

Re:Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock by e28eta on Monday October 12, 2020 @04:41AM (#24752519)

Before I looked at the details, I thought it was electromagnetically driven. Combine that with a power outage, and you’re hunting for little steel balls on the floor. But at least you’d know when the power went out, based on which ones are missing from the base.

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Re:Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock by globular-toast on Monday October 12, 2020 @06:52AM (#24753161)

I wonder, is it possible to make a magnet that's always on and uses power to switch it off? Kind of like how air brakes on trains work.

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Re:Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock by lebuffon on Monday October 12, 2020 @10:26AM (#24754645)

There are classes of relays that worked like that in old portable broadcast video recorders. Essentially a coil around a magnet and the coil was used to strengthen or weaken the flux with a pulse of current. The armature was spring loaded but not strong enough to release from the permanent magnet unless a pulse of "buck" current was applied.

Old timey stuff.

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Re:Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock by andre_ramos on Monday October 12, 2020 @12:17PM (#24756024)

Yes, you add a magnet in the middle of the coil and actuate the coil with opposite polarity to cancel the magnetic field

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