Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock

> The Ferrolic is currently still in development, although the designer intends to make small batches available for pre-order, with each clock costing $8,300 (£5,300).

I fell in love and needed one right until I saw the pricetag. Beautiful clock though - thank you for sharing :)

This is very koel!

You will quickly learn to live with it, just like with older mechanical (granfather's) clocks.

They used the cheaper servos for this build, understandably, but if you buy some more expensive ones you can probably make it nearly silent. This would also likely let you make the servos move faster and reduce the time it takes to update (and thus make noise) at the same time. I'd also consider maybe using solenoids to move the magnets in and out which could be completely silent then too, at the expense of needing some more current when engaging if you add some damping, just a little felt at the end of the rod. Then switch to steppers for the rotation and lifting the ball platform and you could likely have it completely silent.

Maybe, but I probably wouldn't try to use them for that. Instead I'd look into getting some kind of latching solenoid to move the real magnets in and out of position. That'd let you have it be silent (or nearly so) and not need to keep the magnets energized the entire time, reducing power usage. Then steppers for the rotation and platform lift

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.

In the second video you can see that the magnets in the top part move towards and away from the faceplate to release, retain the balls respectively.