Hi,

Hermann has bravely sent me his treasured Jaeger eight day unit with front winder to be captured in 3D. This will mean dismantling it completely.

I will use this thread as a kind of blog to show the process from start to finish.

In addition to this, this thread might be a good way to see how much information we can get on this particular GP part - peoples experiences, any manuals (not likely!), common problems and pointers to originality.

Luckily enough for Herman, I know my limitations so have not taken it apart myself but got a local Horologist to do it.

Before pictures:











After dismantling:









After the clock was taken apart, I e-mailed the initial findings to Herman and a copy of the content is copied in below:

"Well, it is apart! The clock maker/horologist/repairer is absolutely brilliant. He works from home and his workshop was full of wrist watches from Rolex to Seiko and really – like hundred+ year old – old carriage and grandfather clocks. A truly lovely place.

To your dashboard clock. It came apart very easily and he noted the following:
1) It does not appear to have had any repairs or servicing in it’s life. Apparently watch repairers put scratches, notes dates on the case or parts to let other watch repairers know when it was last looked at. Old notes apart, it does not appear to have been looked at in any case.

2) The movement looked more 1940-1950 to him, but he is looking into this. I will – if it is OK with you – e-mail photos of the movement to the Jaeger museum in Switzerland to ask them what they think. He said the movement was really good.

3) He noted three problems:
•The main spring has gone slack as it is the original.
•The mechanism is slightly seized. He dripped some oil on the relevant areas and is pretty confident that this will free them up sufficiently.
•There are two nuts on the rear of the case missing. These are the two holes you can see at the rear of the clock. I will ask him about replacing these, as I forgot earlier today.

4) In addition to the above, he said the bezel surrounding the glass is heated on manufacture and the glass is placed within it, so when it cools the glass is fixed rigidly. Needless to say, bezel and glass have not been separated."

So there it is. I am going to start work on the body now.

Kind Regards


SB

Hi Stuart

Sharing this process with the rest of us is brilliantly generous of you. Please include (copious) notes on the actual process of measuring and transfer of said measurements into your computer. I still have difficulty wrapping my head around this entire project of yours. For instance, how many individual measurements will have to be taken before the whole instrument is completely digitised?

I'm really looking forward to seeing this thread develop - Thanks again!

Johan

Body now created.

I will post methodology in the near future as a PDF link, as it is quite involved and lengthy.

However, the basic choices when starting out on reverse engineering an item are traditional measuring, 3D scan, 2D scan or a combination of all methods.

I have chosen to measure and 2D scan as the parts of the clock are geometric and therefore 3D scanning would be time consuming compared to other methods.

Update pictures below. Note the accuracy of the body as measured by the digi caliper and sorry about the quality of the screenshots - I am no photographer!

Another project of reverse engineering, fairly similar, except that the airplane does not exist anymore. Go to: http://www.fokker-g1.nl/

Connection through the Bugatti Aircraft Association, of course.

_________________
www.BugattiPage.com
www.BugattiRevue.com
www.BugattiAircraft.com

Cool.....3D modelling definitely the way to go!

Regards


SB

We'll probably have to do the same thing for the Bugatti 100P Airplane. Feel like doing that for the BAA? Would keep you busy several years, I suppose.

_________________
www.BugattiPage.com
www.BugattiRevue.com
www.BugattiAircraft.com

The thought had crossed my mind, but I am absolutely flat out work wise at the moment - both paid and Bugatti unpaid.

I would love to help though, so please put a note in your diary for 6 months time to approach me again. Also, if you want to send the odd piece and give me a month to do it, I would have no problem doing that.

Regards


SB