Print guide
Printing a clock bigger than your printer
XVORK cuts your design into pieces that fit your bed and joins them with hidden keys. This page covers what happens after you press Download: the settings to print with, which file to open how, the order it goes together, the movement to buy and how to hang it. The figures for your own clock are in the assembly.txt inside the zip.
What you need
- An FDM printer of any bed size — set yours in the configurator's Print Bed section and the clock is cut to fit it.
- PLA, in the shades the design uses. The download's colors.txt names each one and the slot it goes in.
- A quartz clock movement with the shaft length your assembly.txt asks for — see the movement.
- A wall fixing rated well above the clock's weight.
No glue and no screws: the pieces key together, and the movement's nut clamps the stack.
Before the whole clock
A clock is many hours of printing, and two things are worth knowing before they are spent.
Is the fit right for your printer?
The joints are cut with a fit clearance that suits most printers, not all of them. Download fit test kit in the Joints section prints small coupons at five clearances — one for the keys and one for the dial's seat. Print both, find the step that seats under light thumb pressure, set that clearance, and download again.
Does it look the way the preview did?
Download a sample first, under the Download button, gives you two ring segments, the key between them and the dial segment that sits in the first — real pieces of your design, about two and a half hours on the default clock. The joint, the seat and the surface, at their real size, before the rest.
Slicer settings
The print estimate was measured by slicing the default clock with these settings, so they are the ones its hours and grams describe:
| Setting | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Nozzle | 0.4mm | The thinnest mark is held to 0.9mm, two beads wide. |
| Layer height | 0.20mm | Fine (0.12) looks smoother; Draft (0.28) can let the hidden joints show — see below. |
| Infill | 20% | The pieces are mostly wall; more infill adds weight, not strength that matters here. |
| Supports | Off | Every piece is laid out to print without them — sliced, the ring and dial pieces needed none. |
| Material | PLA | Any standard PLA. |
The joints are hidden under 0.6mm of material — three layers at 0.20mm. At Draft that is two layers, and a buried pocket can start to show through the front. The Joints section says so when it happens; print finer, or make the joint thinner so it sits deeper.
One piece is upside down, on purpose
When the centre hub has a cavity for the movement, its file arrives already turned over — lid on the bed, walls rising from it. Slice it as it arrives. A brim helps, since the lid meets the bed on a narrow ring.
Which file, opened how
The zip always holds one STL per printed piece. What else is in it depends on the options above the Download button.
| File | Open it with | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| segment_1.stl … | Any slicer | The pieces you print, one file each. |
| .3mf | File › Open Project | The whole clock with a filament slot per part. Dragged in or imported instead, it loses the slots and prints one colour. |
| -colour.obj | File › Import | The shades themselves; OrcaSlicer offers to map them onto your filaments. |
| plates/plate_N.3mf | File › Open Project | Which pieces go on one bed together. |
| colors.txt | Any text editor | Which shade goes in which slot. |
| assembly.txt | Any text editor | The order it goes together, the movement to buy, how to hang it. |
An AMS holds four filaments. A design that needs more still prints — the slicer pauses for a swap — but not unattended on one unit. The slot table above Download says how many your design needs.
Putting it together
Every joint opens toward the back, so the clock is built front down: lay the pieces face down on a flat surface — a towel keeps the front unmarked — and each part drops onto the one before it.
- The ring. Each piece has its name on its back: R 1/7, R 2/7 and so on. Looking at the backs, lay them out clockwise from 1 at twelve o'clock, each butted against the next. They will not hold their shape yet.
- The ring keys. One in each seam. The pocket is half in one segment and half in the next; a key that will not sit flat means the two are not closed up yet. Press it level with the back.
- The dial. D 3/7 sits inside R 3/7. Lower each dial segment into the ring: its chamfered edge beds down on a matching cone in the ring and settles level with the back. If it has to be forced, the clearance is tight — the seat coupon in the fit test kit is the one to print. Key the dial seams the same way.
- The centre hub, if you switched one on, goes in the middle, level with the dial. The clock starts without one: the dial comes in to a hole for the movement.
- Turn it over — a second board laid on top makes this easy — and fit the movement from behind, shaft through the dial, or the hub when there is one. Its nut on the front is what holds the face together; bring it up snug.
- The hands press on hour, minute, second. Set them all to twelve before the second hand goes on, or the time reads wrong.
The movement
Movements are sold by shaft length — the thread in front of the body — usually in 11, 13, 16, 20, 23, 27 and 31mm. Your assembly.txt works out what your clock needs (what the shaft crosses, plus the hand stack and 3mm for the nut) and names the next size up, along with the bore.
- Buy the movement your sheet names. A standard quartz movement turns a minute hand up to 300mm; from there a high-torque one is the better choice. The hands are cut for the one chosen in the configurator, so buy that one.
- A standard body is about 56 × 56 × 16mm. When the hub is raised enough, it sits inside the hub's cavity rather than standing off the wall.
Hanging it
A clock designed here hangs from the ring, not from the movement: the first ring segment has a notched hanger cut into its back at twelve o'clock, a slot whose top edge is a row of notches. Put the screw's head in through the slot and lower the clock until the screw drops into a notch. The logo and the text weigh more on one side, so a clock hung from its middle leans; if one side hangs low, lift it and set the screw in a notch nearer that side, a notch at a time until it hangs level. assembly.txt says how far the screw has to stand proud so the movement clears the wall. On an edge profile that thins the ring, the hanger is cut shallower, and the same sheet says how thick a screw head it takes.
The Hanger on the back choice in the Ring section also offers a keyhole, or none. With none, the clock hangs from the small tab moulded into the movement, and that tab, not the printed parts, is the weak link: check what yours is rated for, and past about 1kg do not rely on it — hang the clock from the ring, on a fixing that holds it off the wall by more than the movement's depth.
A wall fixing rated for three times the clock's weight is the usual margin, and plasterboard needs an anchor whatever the number says. The Print Estimate section gives the weight; so does assembly.txt.
If something does not fit
- A seam will not close: almost always an elephant's foot or a brim on the first layer — the back of every piece is a joint face. Scrape the bottom edge flat and try again before reprinting.
- A key is stiff or loose: the clearance is wrong for your printer. Print the fit test kit, pick the step that seats, download again.
- The dial stands proud: the seat is tight; the seat coupon in the same kit finds the clearance that beds it.
- A mark came out ragged or missing: it was thinner than the nozzle lays. The Print Estimate section warns when a mark is too fine; scale it up, or make the clock larger.