Effect of impact interaction in a discharge regulation on timing precision

Conclusions

The impact stage in the discharge-regulator mechanism can be interpreted as a single instantaneous absolutely nonelastic impact and a subsequent kinematically coupled movement of the balancer and escapement wheel in the absence of friction losses.

In order to reduce the effect of the collision instability conditions on the timing precision it is necessary, in addition to structural stabilization of the impact conditions, also to reduce friction losses in the discharge regulator mechanism.

As a result of adopting structural stabilization measures and reducing friction losses in discharge regulators without natural oscillation frequencies, it is possible to reduce the timing error contributed by the collision instability conditions from 1–1.5% to 0.2–0.3%, thus serving to reduce the total timing error to 1%.

The impact instability conditions in the discharge-regulator mechanism affect the energy balance not with respect to the total energy-loss variations due to impacts, but with respect to friction-loss variations.