Acrylic looks amazing when used in these kinetic sculptures, however I usually warn against using acrylic for the wheels and pinions of these wonderful mechanisms because acrylic-on-acrylic contact has very high internal friction - an increased friction that is much higher than wood-on-wood.
Ghost of Time by John Owles, a Simplicity Variant
However, despite the issues with acrylic, John is an acrylic sculptor and wanted to create his beautiful Simplicity completely in acrylic, so to avoid the internal friction intrinsic to acrylic contact, we worked together to create a Simplicity design that has no acrylic-on-acrylic contact. If you are interested in creating in acrylic, contact me before your build and we can work on the design modifications that will allow you to create a beautiful, functional sculpture.
John made a YouTube video of his "Ghost of Time Simplicity," below.
Clockster John Brace asked: "Has anyone tried to make a clock from Perspex?"
I get a lot of questions about making these mechanisms out of materials other than wood. Metals such as aluminum and brass, and various other materials like MDF perform nicely. I even proved that low quality ply will work well when I used the rotten, termite infested, moldy ply from a fallen down chicken coop to make a clock. I wanted to show that these mechanisms are very forgiving of the materials used. That chicken-coop-clock looked really bad, but it ran.
I'm not familiar with Perspex. Had to Google Perspex and found it is an acrylic sheet. Some guys have already made my designs in acrylic and they all have reported that the internal friction of acrylic is very high. This means a lot more drive weight was necessary to overcome the internal friction and drive the mechanism. Excess drive weight always puts stress on the frame and arbors.
