Watch cleaning machines make the cleaning of mechanical watches both convenient and very effective but they can be expensive with most manual machines starting at around $1000 AUD and automatic machines starting at around $8,000 AUD. This is a big expense for a hobbiest like me.
It dawned on me that a 3D printer could be converted into a watch cleaning machine by replacing the hotend on the X axis with a spinning motor. How hard could it be, right!
- Fully automatic
- 1 x Cleaning Chamber
- 2 x Rinse Chamber
- 1 x Drying Chamber NB: I've decided to make it easier for myself so I purchases the Elma SE Basket Complete and the Elma Basket Holder for RM/SE. You could of course rig up your own basket system on the cheap
The cleaning stage and the two rinse stages consist of two phases, the wash/rinse phase and the spin phase to expel liquid. The drying stage only has a spin phase. All features are configured via a configuration file. These include:
- Setting the duration of each phase of the clean
- Setting the motor speed for each phase of the clean
- Setting the motor action for each phase of the clean. These are forward, backward and agitate (a user configured combination of forward and backward movements)
For detail of the full build, see my instructable