One such speaker was a Vietnam prisoner of war who gave a talk about his time in a Viet Cong prison (school appropriate?). He had built a clock while in prison from bits of metal from cans, perhaps a coat hangar or some other kind of wire… And he had brought a replica of it. For some reason that fascinated me. I suppose the ingenuity of humans when left with all the time in the world… idea hands and all that.
[1] (Or maybe it's selective memory and they were so not-the-normal-routine and that is why they stick in my head. There were plenty of other wild all-school events: an Apollo astronaut, some chemical company I suspect—performing feats of chemical magic, Simas Kudirka, some guy with a kind of doomsday computer—perhaps reflecting overpopulation and dwindling resources by 2026…)
I wonder if corrugated cardboard could be used for the gears and thereby would reduce the need for some of the 3D printed tools.
The design of the gears and escapement was AI-assisted: Claude built me interactive browser tools that generate templates and 3D-printable jigs and tools.
I’m happy to answer your questions! And to the commenter who suggested I submit trash clock timekeeping as a talk to 40C3: I did, and it got accepted. CU at Congress, I guess!?