Troubleshooting
Sometimes a mechanism just doesn't want to run or strike correctly - despite pretty much everything looking like it should want to run. On those occasions I set up the mechanism, with its pendulum, on a bench next to my main bench and hook up both a beat amplifier (Time Trax), as well as a beat monitor (Bryan Mumford's Microset) that allows me to plot the beat and/or strikes on my computer monitor, which sits above my main bench. This gallery gives you an idea of how I set all this up.
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Monitoring Beat on Computer
One of the things I like about having a computer on my main bench is being able to monitor a mechanism I have "on test", in real time. Bryon Mumford's Microset timer allows me to both monitor the tick and tock's duration on the timer, as well as plot them on my computer monitor. I can also use the Microset to count and view the strikes on one or both trains of a 3-weight Vienna - a nice option.
One thing that one learns is that, no matter how perfectly the escapement is set up, it is always possible to see variations in the tick and tock, if one increases the scale sufficiently!
