Ripping and screwing back my alarm clock

So lately, I have tried learning some simple electronics. I thought it would be best if I tore apart my alarm clock and examine the works inside it and then re-design my own clock from there - only the face that is, not all the gears and motors and stuff. I have decided to just take pictures of my steps and explain from there. Hopefully, its clear enough! Enjoy!

My alarm clock is completely ripped apart. Here, you see all the parts. The black plastics you see are the casings of the clock that hold the gears. They have a few guides etched on their internal face to make it easier for the technicians to align the gears and electronics.  

I have arranged the gears together with the minute/second/hour hand they fit. Basically, every 'hand' has a corresponding gear and later you will see that all the gears are interconnected and driven by a single ingenious motor.

Just to show you how it looks like the the gears attached to the 'hands'. Take note of the different levels of gears. Later you will realize that the gears work in 3D! The gears have teeth on its circumference as well as on its internal spacer. 

I now attach the gears to the casing. It is a perfect fit.  

Here is the first 3D gear. Although I have put the gear on the top, it revolves both the top gear and the one below it - although at different rotational speeds. 

Now, I put another black plastic thing onto the gears. Basically, this is more like a guide to help you place your gears nicely and prevent it from moving too much. Also, it supports the 3D gear design that I talked about previously. 

Now, all the electronics come. The bronze coil you notice is what the current goes through. The current is a pulsed current. Although the currect is a DC from the battery, the electronics in the circuit pulses the current to this bronze coil. This help to create a temporary magnetic field which acts upon(check the physics here, pretty cool. I am not giving the exact details of its working and my description is not entirely accurate as well. I am just simplifying it here) the small gear. Surprisingly, the small gear you see below the bronze coil is actually the motor! They manufacturers have cleanly hidden a magnet beneath it which rotate every every time your coil is pulsed. Now, you are wondering 'what about the frequency control' right? Here is where to quartz comes in. The quartz is embedded within the electronics itself and it works on the principles of piezoelectricity - any material under stress releases charges and vice-versa. The quartz crystal vibrates (due to the electric current passing through it) at a very precise frequency (about 32000 if I am not wrong) and this frequency is detected by a mini-detector also embedded in the electronics (the detector actually measures the charge coming out from the quartz as the quartz expands - remember, its piezoelectricity). Now this determines when to release the current to the coil and in turn drive the magnetic gear. How smart!

Now, just 3 more gears. So now you can see how the clock works. The motor explained above rotates the  pale white gear which in turn rotates the pure white gear in the centre(this is the one that controls the second hand directly). The gears are all connected using the inner teeth they have. This way, you also can proportionate the second to minute relation and the minute to hour relation. As for the alarm, there is another independent gear right at the bottom layer. The electronics basically checks if the hour hand coincides with the alarm hand and get the buzzer to ring when the condition is met.  

I fix the back casing. 

Now I fit this whole set to the housing. 

Oops, I forgot to show how the alarm works. As you press the white color plastic, it breaks the circuit from within by shifting 2 plates that are touching each other - yes, i saw the structure inside, they were plates and not wires. Pretty interesting.

The front of the clock.

The back.

Here, I bought a simple canvas from the art accessories shop. I ripped out my other clock and changed the housing basically. I will soon paint it once I find a nice pattern to paint on it. 

The back of the clock I made. 

Cool stuff huh? How I wished my physics lessons were like that. They should give us 3 or 4 hours to investigate how the clock works, describe the mechanisms and do some calculation regarding the frequency of the piezoelectric stuff. Would be fun and you wouldn't realize that you have learned so much in the process. 

PS: you can read more about clocks here. I used this webpage while understanding how the clocks worked. (Link here)