/wt/ watch thread

>likely
Funny how that word doesn't mean "guaranteed to"

>comparing machine made, mass produced items, to hand finished products.
Sure is down syndrome in here.

>Funny how that word doesn't mean "guaranteed to"
No, it means "likely".

>comparing machine made, mass produced items, to hand finished products.
Low standards are low standards.

nah it's ok
still better than a chrome plated brass Timex

Literally "wristwatch: the wristwatch".

Now compare the finished product on the wrist.

I don't know what the case material is. Watchshop says stainless steel even when only the caseback is stainless steel so their info is useless.
what do you mean?

I've been wearing an f-91w for a long time, was looking for an upgrade, both to have something that's more legible, and also not sure if women are turned off by an f-91w.

Isn't the minute hand too short? And maybe the minute and hour hands are not the same thickness? Kind of regret the purchase already. Oh well, it was cheap.

clearly this belongs in /fa/

...

What?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_timekeeping_devices

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horology

etc.

You wouldn't know "technology" from your butthole.

...

You can bullshit all you want, watches are technology.
And “fashion watches” are reviled for a reason.

>w-watches are technology
>I s-swear!!

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The most heated discussions and lengthy pastas are about quartz vs mechanical, finishing processes, etc.

See Timekeeping is probably one of THE oldest technologies there is.

>Wristcheck
What do you wear today?

I go first, my old Junghans 620.00

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Silicon hairsprings, ceramic ball bearings, new alloys for mainsprings, new coatings, new lumibrite with infinite rechargeability without losing potency, the Citizen 0100 from last year with its lens-shaped quartz crystals that keep time to 1 second per year, the Zenith defy silicon movement that's entirely mechanical but has almost no moving parts and keeps time better than standard quartz, etc. etc.

And that's just the more recent novelties, without mentioning the massive horological breakthroughs from the recent past (complications, waterproofing, helium escape valves, L-shaped gaskets, unidirectional bezels, ...) that are found in so many watches being produced today and are still greatly appreciated often for their historical significance.

Even when it comes to finishing (both external and internal), modern materials and tools allow for levels of quality that were never possible until a few decades ago.
Look at something like a Philippe Dufour or even a Lange. Or Grand Seiko's virtually distortion-free zaratsu and microscopic dial details.
Much is said about the "traditional craftsmanship" of these watches, but the reality is that this level of intricacy and apparent flawlessness was simply IMPOSSIBLE until twenty-something years ago.

>Zenith defy silicon movement that's entirely mechanical but has almost no moving parts
???

It has almost all the same moving parts as a traditional mechanical watch, and the moving parts it eliminated were replaced with parts that also move

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The oscillator replaces the hairspring, balance wheel, regulator, cock/balance bridge, pallet fork, escape wheel, roller. Along with the various jewels, pins, bridges, screws, ... that those imply (and can also wear out or be damaged).
And yes, the oscillator does "move", but there's no impact or friction; it just vibrates freely.

> Replaces the hairspring, balance, pallet fork, roller
Sure, true. Although I'd say the most significant thing it replaces in that respect is the balance staff, which is probably still the most fragile of the parts it replaces. That said, the silicon oscillator is put under entirely different kinds of strain than the hairspring.

> Escape wheel
No? The escape wheel is plainly visible at 6 o'clock.

> Regulator
I mean, the watch doesn't have a regulator; plenty of free-sprung balance watches exist without a regulator as well.

> Various bridges, jewels, screws, etc
I guess. I'm not usually too worried about my bridges getting "worn out". I'd be more worried about a watchmaker damaging the silicon oscillator than damaging a screw or a jewel.

> There's no impact or friction, it just vibrates freely
What do you think keeps it vibrating? It's not magic. The gear train is kept under load by a mainspring and the escape wheel provides an impulse to the oscillator, just like the impulse to the pallet fork provided by the escape wheel in a traditional mechanical watch.

Don't get me wrong, I love the zo342 tech, but it's just a replacement oscillator, not an entirely new form of watch construction.

>No? The escape wheel is plainly visible at 6 o'clock.
Well sure.

>I mean, the watch doesn't have a regulator; plenty of free-sprung balance watches exist without a regulator as well.
And those have other parts that regulate, like screws.

>I'm not usually too worried about my bridges getting "worn out"
Didn't apply to the bridges.

>What do you think keeps it vibrating?
Obviously there's contact, but no more than between two gears connecting.
Nothing like the jewels slamming into metal that you get in Swiss lever escapements.

And when I originally said "moving parts" I didn't exactly have the conventional gear train in mind, which just lazily rolls along rather than frantically slam back and forth.

>it's just a replacement oscillator, not an entirely new form of watch construction.
You could argue the same thing with quartz, especially something like spring drive.
But it's still true that an analog quartz has almost no moving parts compared to a mechanical watch.

If the argument is "this movement is better because it avoids all the parts involved in regulation because it doesn't have a regulation system" then that doesn't really seem like an upgrade to me, frankly.

The escapement system I would believe is more resilient to wear due to the silicon construction instead of a metal escape wheel. I would argue that given the high frequency of the oscillator there's at least a question of how long the watch can run (i.e., how many years) before the teeth in the escapement start getting worn down or deformed, whereas in a traditional mechanical those parts are regularly re-lubricated. There's definitely more stress in the escapement contacts than there is between running gears; you can see the equivalent of the pallet fork "slamming into" the escape wheel.

It eliminates pretty much all "violently" moving parts from the Swiss lever escapement.
The longevity of the oscillator itself (or directly connected parts) is an unknown.

If you divide the watch into oscillator, escapement, and gear train/display/keyless works, then all watches except pic related having moving parts in the oscillator, though I'd agree that the oscillator in a quartz watch is "moving" on a rather different scale than a traditional mechanical watch (or the zo342, which I'd consider more similar to a traditional mehanical watch). I'd probably also argue a tuning fork watch is more like quartz. The escapement in most analog quartz watches is definitely less probe to wear or damage, although it does "move". And of course the rest if the watch is basically the same with the exception of the geartrain not being under load.

Would agree that the escapement in the spring drive truly does have no moving parts.

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>Much is said about the "traditional craftsmanship" of these watches, but the reality is that this level of intricacy and apparent flawlessness was simply IMPOSSIBLE until twenty-something years ago.
I don't think that's true, particularly not true of hand finished parts. Dufour is not using any technology or technique that didn't exist in the 1970s, he's just taking the to time and has the skill to execute to an extremely high level.

It's with volume production watches that technology has enabled a huge leap in external finishing, and a smaller improvement in movement finishing. Plus the move of mechanicals to the luxury market also enables far more labour and capital to be invested in external finishing and movement finishing in volume production watches than would have been possible in the pre-quartz era.

>The conclusion to move /wt/ to was reached independently of recent events regarding the thread
b-b-b-bulllshit
>largely in part by our belief that the topics discussed in /wt/ are often not tech related.
As if no other thread on any other board ever goes off topic

I think modern Rolex really epitomizes the way modern automation has changed the way high-end mass production watches are made. The timekeeping tech itself (hairspring and balance material, lubricants, etc) has advanced somewhat since the 70s, but I don't think that can account for the move to million-watch-per-year production at a 2spd level of precision; rolex's automated testing infrastructure is also largely involved.

Absolutely. Rolex is one of the best high precision mass manufacturing R&D and production equipment fabricators in the world because they have to in house develop most of the capital equipment and processes they use. There simply is no ready made solution for trying to produce Rolex volumes at Rolex quality standards.

That being said, I don't the shift in technology has done that much for haute horlogerie as most of that work is still done by hand in ways that existed long before now.

Pic related is an upscale watch from the heyday of upscale watches (60s) by one of the holy trinity of watchmaking in its prime: Vacheron Constantin.

It has all the hallmarks of something like a Dufour or Lange (black polish, hand beveling, etc.), but nothing like the level of execution of modern Dufour or Lange.

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Also keep in mind that if the ZO342 were to be mass produced the cost for producing a replacement oscillator wouldn't be that bad, and be possible indefinitely since no specialized tooling beyond standard photolithographic equipment would be required.

That is a difference of how much labour and skill was invested, not technical possibility.

Pic related is Philippe Dufour himself, designing a piece with the bevel included in the computer design.
It's only been like 20 years that personal computers could do this for people in a low-threshold manner.

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what would a real life James Bond use

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CAD has certainly enabled designing highly complex movements, but as far as movement finishing specifically, that work is still by hand using tools and techniques that existed well before the use of CAD in haute horlogerie.

The reality is simply that there is no better way to achieve the best possible finish on metal parts than doing it by hand with hand tools (black polish) or simply manually controlled machines for brushed finishes, Geneva stripes and so on. Those tools and techniques have not radically changed in the last 30 years, but the market willing to pay for people to spend that much time finishing movement parts has grown a lot.

Can anyone recommend a cheap basic oscilloscope for my CSAC project?

I'm hoping I can drive a stepper motor with the basic pps signal, but I probably won't be able to; it has a very narrow pulse since it's designed for digital electronics and it's probably not enough to drive the motor all by itself. I might end up going with the Arduino idea some user proposed here. That should make it more of an interesting project, after all.

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Better design capabilities (like CAD) allow for better designs and better planning.
This in turn elevates the finishing by allowing for equal bevel breadth, better consistency across bridges of the "côtes de Genève", tighter tolerances meaning finer alignments (i.e. no broad channels to accomodate for inaccuracies, etc.), ...
There's also microscopes and other imaging techniques that allow for better follow-up, hole alignment, etc. which again make things tighter in general.

>This in turn elevates the finishing by allowing for equal bevel breadth, better consistency across bridges of the "côtes de Genève", tighter tolerances meaning finer alignments
I'll concede you have a point on planning, but now you are talking about incremental improvements and not that an extremely high level of finishing in haute watches having been "impossible" 20 years go.

I had been thinking in terms of the tools and techniques actually used to apply the finishes, and as far as I'm aware those haven't really changed much in terms of hand finishing.

>There's also microscopes and other imaging techniques that allow for better follow-up, hole alignment
I'm not aware of any huge improvements in microscopy in the last 20-30 years that would be relevant to haute watchmakers, would you happen to know what they are or have a link? I'm interested.

GWM5610

Non watchmaker here, what's so special about this?

>I'll concede you have a point on planning, but now you are talking about incremental improvements and not that an extremely high level of finishing in haute watches having been "impossible" 20 years go.
One thing leads to another. Movements used to look more crude in general because they had to account for any number of inaccuracies due to a lack of things like computer drawings. And as such, the standards were simply lower compared to today, even if the actual work is done on the same machines and with the same techniques.
A movement like the current Lange in the OP would have been utterly impossible without computers.

>I'm not aware of any huge improvements in microscopy in the last 20-30 years that would be relevant to haute watchmakers,
Well for one thing you can feed microscopy images to your PC, and compare with your drawings.

When is the ETA on this shit? I wanna blind people with one

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something in 2019. Nothing announced, as far as I'm aware.

GS puts spacers in between the different parts driving each hand so they don't interfere with each other.

It's just one of the crazy little facts about Grand Seiko's 9f quartz.
There's a special date change mechanism that builds up torque and then uses that to switch the date in 1/2000th of a second, and there's a separate technician to assemble and install it.
Tthe "tick" is actually two very quick half-ticks, but the eye sees only a single tick: youtube.com/watch?v=RFgGb1OunQI&t=25s
The hands are 0.2mm apart. It takes special expertise to mount them so they don't hit each other.
The jeweled part of the movement is super sealed, and GS themselves used to say it could go 50 years without service or relubing.
They wind the coil with autistic precision.
There's also a system with a tiny hairspring that keeps the seconds hand from twitching at the end of the tick.
etc.

For more: timelessluxwatches.com/reviews/not-just-quartz-grand-seiko-9f-movement/

Another good, more technical link: watchesbysjx.com/2013/05/explained-seiko-9f-quartz-movements-definitive-proof-that-high-end-quartz-exists.html

The little spring in the bottom right is what keeps the seconds hand from twitching at the end of the tick.

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And the autistic coil winding.

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That's pretty cool, gonna read up on this.

>And as such, the standards were simply lower compared to today, even if the actual work is done on the same machines and with the same techniques.
That's pretty much what I was saying.

>A movement like the current Lange in the OP would have been utterly impossible without computers.
Agreed, but I would say that is for architectural rather than movement finishing reasons. CAD and computer simulation revolutionized haute movement design. I remember that JLC basically said the gyrotourbillon wouldn't have been feasible to attempt without the aid of CAD and simulation.

>Well for one thing you can feed microscopy images to your PC, and compare with your drawings.
I could swear I recall this existing pre-PC but I can't find the reference right now. I'll see if I can dig it up for you later if you're interested.

>Agreed, but I would say that is for architectural rather than movement finishing reasons.
In an absolute sense, the black polish or beveling from the 60s won't be worse than Dufour's black polish or beveling, but in terms of consistency for instance there will indeed be a major difference.

Modern computer-designed movement architecture also allows for much denser concentration and equal distribution of finished surfaces, enhancing the overall finished look even more because there's more to see and less interesting parts (baseplates etc.) are covered better.

>I could swear I recall this existing pre-PC but I can't find the reference right now. I'll see if I can dig it up for you later if you're interested.
There used to be things like light boxes where you could superimpose images and drawings, but this was a lot more involved and thus rare. Also technically inferior obviously to computer imagery.

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Watch tan competition officially declared. Get to working on that arm cancer boiz, results due in mid-September.

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No one told me there was a g thread.
wohoo

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>I don't know what the case material is
Amazon says stainless steel too.

>seiko shitposters desperately trying to revive their dead general
Guys, it's over, what are you doing?

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>but in terms of consistency for instance there will indeed be a major difference.
I'm curious what you mean by consistency here?

>much denser concentration and equal distribution of finished surfaces
That's a fair point.

what's the best material for a wristwatch? Post an example. It's probably not bronze, but the fact that bronze gains a patina is pretty cool.

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>I'm curious what you mean by consistency here?
Consistency of bevel widths, côtes de genève across bridges, screwhole bevel sizes, etc.

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I’d wear a bronze watch anyway but I feel it needs to be some ETA because if it were a cheap quartz movement, the patina would just suck

Same place it's always been these past five years or so.

I have a similar model if not the same. The case looks like metal but is plastic, fucking garbage.

i don't like how it's painted plastic either but it's a reliable watch

Thoughts on this watch?
amazon.com/dp/B00132UP22/

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Just get an f-91w, doesn't pretend to be what it's not, and is more comfortable.

A replica PAM671 would be an interesting watch to own, too bad it's too big for me

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What's your guys opinions on this? Should I get the one on the left or the one on the right? I kinda like the black look even though the words could be arranged better but the right one has its charm too

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Has gruebel forsey said much about their nano movement lately?

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who cares, they're both crap

wow, you really provided a quality post right there. grow up

Nothing I've heard of.

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Any requests for the next round of testing?

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If you want to ship it to me I'll include it in testing.

>If you want to ship it to me I'll include it in testing.
ha really, i mean it's quartz so would it not just be nearly dead on no matter what/

Most modern non-tc have an easily measurable difference between skin temperature and room temperature - usually 0.5spd to 1spd.

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they sure are user. my 9F has kept perfect time for nearly 5 months.

what i have learned so far from this 9F and my previous one as well is that like mechanicals and autos, these watches can far exceed their manufacturer specs. it really is an amazing piece of engineering.

also, why was /wt/ gone for like a week?

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>also, why was /wt/ gone for like a week?
Mods being fags.

because of that spammer? why didn't they just ban him?

A prototype Omega megaquartz 2.4mhz up for sale on chrono24. One of two prototypes known to exist, in a one-of-a-kind steel case and with a dial similar to that of the original beta 21 and megaquartz 32khz.

Shame it's 4x the price of a production marine chronometer, would love to pick this up.

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Mods unironically became that one fag that would just post "". Anyway, have some tuning forks.

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Neat. Where does one even get one of those faux la-souris'?

They did recently release a fully metal g-shock in the classic form factor! I bought one. It's probably not worth the price (msrp 600, but ebay vultures are selling them for over 800 now), but I really love the idea of a square g-shock made of steel. Ironically, I'm worried that it might actually be less resilient than the traditional resin case. Does anyone with a full metal 5000 have any thoughts on its durability?

>Most modern non-tc have an easily measurable difference between skin temperature and room temperature - usually 0.5spd to 1spd.
huh, did not know that thanks

I found one on eBay from a seller that appeared to be liquidating a watchmaker's stuff. I have no idea what its purpose was and have never seen anything like it before. My guess was it was a demonstration too for ADs, to help explain to customers how the watch worked. It seems like it would not have been useful for watchmakers since the micromotor assembly is sealed and unserviceable. When it arrives I'll take some video of it for wt.

>When it arrives I'll take some video of it for wt.
Nice. If you ever find a second one let me know. Might as well since I have a megasonic.

Once I get it I'll stop by the Omega boutique and all the tech there if he could get any information about it for me.