The Sliding Pinion has been a real challange to make and the most difficult and important component I made for my school watch.
The major problem I faced was to make the square hole in such a long piece through brass first during prototipe making and then after through steel, for the ratchet and the cycloid teeth I already had experience when I made the winding pinion.
I had to experiment many different techniques and various way, I had to make many different punches hardened and tempered to a different strenght in order to be able to go through steel and pull it out without breaking it.
I broke a few drills along the process, I made a flying cutter as I didn't have the right module to cut the cycloid teeth and worked well on brass but when I used on steel for some strange reason that I never understood it was not working, without mentioning the enormous amount of burrs that the flying cutter was creating while cutting through steel forcing me to make several passes in order to reduce and remove some of them, the rest I had to remove it by hand.so in the end was not the right way to proceed but still was a very good experience as I learned how to make a flying cutter.
I made supports pins.
Spent many hours thinking, trying to be creative and find solutions,also lots of frustration.
At some point along the way I seriously thought I wouldn't have made it, thanks god I am stubborn and I hardly give up and in the end I came up with a solution, always supported by my instructor otherwise I am not sure if I had succeeded.
I let the viewers, while looking at the pictures, to let their immagination run free and figure out how I really made it.
Thanks god also for the school support that bought for me the right cutter/s when needed.
For the brass prototipe in the end I used one method and for the steel piece I had to modify my technique.
In the end I was successful and I am very happy about the experience I had in making this such difficult component
