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Ratchet Escapement

The escapement of a mechanical watch, enlarged: a ratchet wheel, a rocking anchor with ruby pallets, a swinging balance and a following gear, ticking in sharp steps. Loops perfectly.

3D object, V2 Objects3DSeamless loop, verified142 lines of codev1.0.0

In Machines & clockwork, Craft & heritage

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Ratchet Escapement preview
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Presets

1

Whole turns of the escape wheel per loop, sixteen ticks each.

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View code Sample video (default settings, 2.6 MB)
Info

What it is

The heart of a mechanical watch, enlarged and laid bare. A sixteen-toothed escape wheel is held by the two jewelled pallets of an anchor; the anchor rocks to and fro, letting one tooth escape at every tick, and the wheel advances in a sharp little step each time. A balance wheel with a hairspring swings steadily above it, setting the pace, and a larger gear turned by the wheel follows at half its speed. Choose the metal (brass, steel, rose or blue steel), the whole turns of the escape wheel per loop, whether a dark bridge plate sits behind, the backdrop colour and whether the camera sways.

Reuse it in your own idea

  • Watch brand: Brass, one turn.
  • Cool engineering: Steel, three turns.
  • Luxury: Rose gold, no plate.

Which part is reusable

src/ratchet-escapement.js is the ingredient your AI reuses. demo.js is only the example scene around it, and uses chrome-material only for the demo.

Good to know

  • The pallets do not truly lock against the teeth: the motion is timed by formula, not simulated.
  • The follower gear's teeth only roughly mesh with the escape wheel.

Technical details

Technical details
Implementation
Three.js 0.185.1 (WebGL) · ES module src/ratchet-escapement.js
Exports
  • createEscapement({ metal?, turns?, plate? }) => { group, ticks, setProgress(progress), dispose() }
  • METALS: { brass, steel, rose, blue }
Dependencies (exact)
  • three@0.185.1 (source) — Renderer, geometry and shader materials.
  • chrome-material@1.1.0 (demo) — Studio environment light, backdrop and contact shadow.
  • apw-runtime@1.0.0 (demo) — Demo harness.
How it fits a scene

Coordinates: The escape wheel (radius 2.05) is at the origin of the group; the anchor pivots 3.5 above it and the balance wheel sits 6 above it; the follower gear is 4.75 to the right.

Lighting: A warm key light with a shadow map and the studio environment on the metal.

Timing: setProgress(progress) sets every part's angle in closed form from the tick count; frames render in any order.

Output
1080×1080, 30 fps, 16 s · procedural (computed from the frame number) · seamless loop — The wheel advances a whole number of teeth per loop (sixteen ticks per turn, an even number so the anchor is back where it started), the balance swings in a sine of the ticks and the camera sway is a sine of the loop, so the last frame meets the first.
Tested
Rendered 480 frames on 2026-10-06 in Chrome 154.0.8037.97 headless on Linux 7.0.0-38-generic (x64), Node 22.14.0 (WebGL 2 via SwiftShader (software)). Same frame twice from fresh pages: identical. Loop: Frame 0 vs end state (progress 1): mean |Δ| 0.0000, max |Δ| 0 of 255.
Performance
A few thousand triangles and a shadow map: about a millisecond a frame on an integrated Intel GPU. Software WebGL renders in about a second a frame.
Export a video yourself
Download the source, then in the folder: npm install npm run render -- ratchet-escapement/1.0.0 --out my-video.mp4Needs Node 18+, ffmpeg and Chrome/Chromium. Add --params my-settings.json (from Copy settings) for your own settings.
Version
1.0.0 · sha256:b3b78447dcf7e48e…
Files
License
MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 AI Pixel Wizard. Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE in this folder. License details
Provenance
Adapted from the owner's threejs-sketches/objects-scenes/ratchet-escapement (MIT) and rebuilt for AI Pixel Wizard in October 2026 as an original studio object: an extruded sawtooth escape wheel, a ruby-pallet anchor, a balance wheel with hairspring and a follower gear, all timed from a whole tick count on an exact loop.
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