Watch material have already had a try in many aspects, really, what it
remains finally is the decorating ability and sense of beauty. Last year, people
started to play a "Silicon", it sounds fresh, but soon a professional stands up
and says: silicon is not advanced, cheap material, easy processing, in China
many semiconductor factories can make a transition to produce silicon parts, and
in second years the price of silicon gossamer has dropped to 0.17 Chinese Yuan,
the future of silicon belongs to Guangdong province.
Putting the diamond in the watch absolutely is perfect, hearts and arrows
could be best. A ring, two rings, three rings are filled with watch. Maybe we
cam use more other materials except industry material, such as rosewood Cartire,
marble PANERAI, wedges commonly used in furniture instead of screws, maybe in
the future high fastness is not valued, beauty is the key. There are platinum,
it must be mentioned. Platinum is the precious metal with a high melting point,
in addition to jewelry and watch making industry, also it is widely used in
automobile manufacturing, processing the parts of emissions from automobiles
system, last year because the production of several major auto groups were
reduced, platinum prices from $1400 an ounce in July to $700 an ounce, all of a
sudden, it has a big surplus. So this year many watch factories have introduced
timely platinum watches, and cost can drop quite much.
Evolution path
Whether using the timer function of watch to measuring and distributing the
time that has gone and never come back for ever; or using its luxury and brand
to highlight the wealth, status and aesthetic orientation; or to take the watch as a memorial goods in significant event or good times;
or even regard it as a gift to send your relatives and friends, watches are the
concept of time and space and exist in people’s life in physical form. In other
words, the watches that you see and reserve and love are made from a variety of
materials. While the watches material as the watch function structure is the
carrier to express people’s emotion, aesthetics and show the value, which is
always the focus of attention and the target of innovation by watch designer,
manufacturer, distributors, users, collectors and so on.
Material recovery
In eighteenth Century, the development of iron and steel industry has
become the important content and material basis of industrial revolution.
Thereafter, in the middle of the nineteenth Century the modern open hearth and
converter steelmaking technology make human truly into the Iron Age. In the late
twentieth Century, brass, aluminum alloy material watch was also popular, but
finally lost the support of consumer due to the defects of material performance,
only except stainless steel, titanium alloy watch.
A lot of core technology innovation and material progress were appeared
after seventeenth Century. On 1675, Christiaan Huygens invented the Archimedes
spiral balance spring; 1795, Breguet invented the double layer coiling type
balance with hairspring, with Philip J terminal curve, the industry called
Breguet type spring; in 1897, Charles Edouard Guillaume first invented the INVRA
iron nickel alloy hairspring material, and it plays a crucial role in watches
accuracy and performance. Although in this period the watch dial, plate, gear
and other basic still use copper base material or copper alloy material, but its
performance also gets the continuous upgrading along with the progress of
metallurgical technology. As for the shaft parts, copper material is transited
to modern easy-cutting steel, in order to improve its strength, rigidity and
frictional resistance.
Times of innovation
In 2005, Patek
Philippe developed a new type of single crystal silicon material
-“Silinvar”. It applied new technology "Patek Philippe terminal curve." to
produce Spiromax hairspring balance wheel and an escapement. This silicon
material has a self lubrication, low density, antimagnetic and corrosion
resistance and other excellent properties. With exceptional design, it has
excellent isochronous, and is not affected by temperature, vibration and
magnetic field, and realizes epoch-making leap for the mechanical watch
precision.
At present, the brands that have used silicon or silicon based materials to
produce balance wheel and escapement institution have Breguet 591A series and
the Marine; OMEGA
Classic 5197 and Hour Vision 8166; Athens Anniversary 160, Freak and the Sonata;
Chopin L.U.C./Calibre 4TBST; Jaeger Le Coulter Extreme LAB (platinum iridium
alloy hairspring); Constant core jump series; and Rolex silicon hairspring and
Parachrom niobium zirconium hairspring etc. In addition to well-known brands in
the innovation of core material aspects, some small watch factories and
independent watchmaker also rely on their own resources to carry out research
and development. For example, H.Moser & Cie make use of gold / platinum
material manufacturing escapement fork, the escapement wheel and balance wheel
screws, to prevent the magnetic interference; independent watchmaker Kari
Voutilainen made Masterpiece Chronograph, using the new material Carbontime
balance wheel and hairspring produced by single Monofilament CarbonFiber,
balance wheel is mounted Tantalum-Gold compensation screw, and it is not
affected by the change of temperature and magnetic resistance and has better
isochronism.
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