Q2 SUSPENSION

Flex bearings are constructed utilizing flat springs which are locked and crossed at a 90 degree angle and encapsulated in a cylindrical steel housing. A cutaway on the left shows the construction of the C-Flex bearing. Using them seemed like a good idea.

When I had originally designed Q2, I made the decision to use a knife edge suspension. The pendulum in Q2 is a true compound pendulum and I wasn't at all sure that a knife edge suspension would be appropriate for this type of pendulum.

As it turned out - after running the clock for a couple of months - the suspension did not perform as well as I had hoped for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. The clock initially performed well and for the first month and I had no reason to think that it wouldn't continue to do so. In the sixth week however I noticed that it wasn't keeping time as well as it had and by the end of two months of running it was clear to me that there was a problem. It appeared that the knife edge was "drifting" slightly moving the whole pendulum assembly towards the rear of the clock. I think that this problem is the result of having a "balanced" pendulum with a heavy bob above the knife edge combined with not mounting

the knife edge in a gimbal assembly as is done with standard pendulums to keep them vertical. A gimbal assembly is not practical for a compound pendulum because of the instability it creates (I saw this in an experimental compound pendulum I built to try the concept). At this point I disassembled the pendulum and fitted it with C-Flex bearings (basically a crossed spring suspension) in place of the knife edge and this solved the problem

The original Q2 knife edge suspension

The new Q2 cross spring suspension  known  as a C-Flex Bearing.