how could I make the gears on a plastic wall clock rotate faster?

Question

This in turn would make the hands spin a lot faster which is what I need for a movie I am filming. Thanks!

Answer 1

One way to get this effect is to simply use stop-motion photography, where you slow down the filming of the object rather than trying to speed the object up.

Answer 2

These days, most watches and clocks are kept in time by the vibrations of a quartz crystal. If you want to speed the clock up, you replace the crystal with one that vibrates at a higher frequency. This is done by etching it with hydrofluoric acid to make it thinner. But I don't think you'd be able to use this method to speed it up enough for the hands' motion to be visible. However, if you've ever seen one of those indicators which tells you the state of the tides, most use the fact that the tides are about 40 minutes later each day, so they use a standard electronic clock movement with the crystal replaced by a crystal with a lower frequency, so the clock loses 40 minutes a day. My suggestion is to use time lapse photography. Expensive movie cameras, both film and digital, often have this facility. You shoot the scene at a slower rate than the usual 24 frames a second. When it's played back at normal speed, it's speeded up. You can even use this method to show what it looks like to drive from London to Brighton in 4 minutes.

Answer 3

If the clock hands are being run by electric motor then its easy to move it faster by providing high power to motor. But some of the mechanical clocks cannot be made to run faster

In some movies the affect of fast moving clock is shown by showing different scenes in time by morphing them together like
1st scene is at 1 o'clock
2nd scene is at 3 o'clock and so on.

Answer 4

Hi. If you're handy you could attach a small motor to the gear mechanism. The second hand gearing would have to be removed since it would be screaming! The first answer makes more sense for a movie though. Can be a lot more artistic.

Answer 5

more specifically use higher voltage not neccesarily higher amperage.
AAA, AA, C, D, batteries are all 1.5 volts each. hook two of these in series(like a flashlight) and you get 3 volts. most cheap wall clocks are 1.5 volts(1 battery) try using 2 batteries see what happens. those clock mechanisms are cheap cheap so you can use trial and error