My GraLab Micro Timer stopped clicking

[ntenny]

I use a GraLab #202 "Micro Timer" as a process timer for developing. I've dabbed a little glow-in-the-dark paint on so I can see it enough to be useful in the dark, but I've always relied as well on the fact that it made a little audible "click" when the hands passed each other. It's just easier to sit in the dark, count eight clicks, and then agitate, occasionally checking the dial to make sure I'm still in sync, than to have to peer at it constantly.

It has now stopped clicking, and I can't figure out what changed or how to fix it. I'm not even sure what mechanism made the click in the first place. Any insight?

(Yes, I know it would be fairly cheap to replace, but I'd still rather fix it if I can. What can I say---I'm an engineer.)

Thanks for any suggestions.

-NT

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

I see it a small version of the standard GraLab.

My guess is the mechanism isn't meant to tick, it just did, and as parts wore in and got smoothed down it may have stopped. Or it may have a clicker that has just given up the ghost.

I would open it up and have a look and see if you can make sense of it.

You can always add a 'clicker' - something along the lines of a baseball card flapping against the spokes of a bicycle wheel. That will date some readers here, but it was at one time a standard accessory added by 8 year olds so their bicycles sounded like motorcycles - it produced a sound that required the imagination of an 8 year old for its transformation.

Anything the minute hand brushes against on its journey past 12 o'clock would work.