Re: Digitizers, Renishaw (for bill phillips)

Hi Ian,

I finally remembered the program I was going to suggest:

Spectrogram version 5.1.7 is now available for download. Version
5.1.7 combines the features of all previous versions and adds the
following improvements.

http://www.monumental.com/rshorne/gramdl.html

I don't know if it directly applies to your clock projects, as it is a
general purpose program. I remember playing with phonograph pickups
when I was in school, great fun! I'll bet they are hard to find now.

I always wondered how they adjusted clocks, without taking DAYS to get
it right! There was a movie on the first "sea going" navigation clock,
and it's development. Quite interesting.

Clock work would be an interesting machining project, but I'd like to
start with BIGGER GEARS! I have heard of wooden and paper clock kits.

Alan KM6VV


Ian Wright wrote:

>
> Hi Alan,
>
> I was just trying a couple of shareware and commercial watch timing programs
> but they turned out to be pretty useless as they were designed to run in
> Windows - not in real time and the timing periods involved were not long
> enough to get useful results. I have considered trying to write something
> similar for RT linux but, so far, other things have got in the way. All the
> programs do really is listen to the 'ticks' that the timepieces make and
> compare them with a timebase to derive the rate at which the watch is
> gaining or losing. The real trick is to switch the listening bit on and off
> though as the timepiece makes all sorts of spurious noises which also get
> picked up so a 'proper' system firstly cleans up the audio signal to just
> keep the loudest 'ticks' and then only listens to these within a certain
> percentage of the time when they are expected to occur. One of the biggest
> difficulties I found was that, understandably, the programs available are
> 'standardised' to the most usually found frequencies whereas the antique
> watches which I work on often have frequencies which are considered
> 'unusual'.
>
> Now, however, the pick-ups which I am using are simply hooked up through
> 'telephone amplifiers' to enable my tired ears to pick up the nuances of the
> watch's ticks which give clues as to the problems lurking within. The
> pickups do just as good a job as commercial units costing hundreds of times
> more!
>
> Ian
> --
> Ian W. Wright
> Sheffield UK
> www.iw63.freeserve.co.uk
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alan Marconett KM6VV" <KM6VV@...>
> To: <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@egroups.com>
> Sent: 09 January 2001 18:15
> Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Digitizers, Renishaw (for bill phillips)
>
> > Ian,
> >
> > What kind of computer program, and what do you look for? Using a sound
> > blaster card? I've used an analyzer program to align HF transceivers.
> > Just curious.
> >
> > Alan KM6VV