Modern Equivalent of Watchmaking?
 

Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK) I'm curious
what current industry is similarly motivated to develop miniature
mechanical mechanisms? I'm talking about metalworking here -- not
silicon wafer etched nano-bots. Thanks.

Dave wrote:

Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK) I'm curious
what current industry is similarly motivated to develop miniature
mechanical mechanisms? I'm talking about metalworking here -- not
silicon wafer etched nano-bots. Thanks.

Um, mechanical watch making still exists, it's just been relegated to
the high end of the market. There is also plenty of micro machining
going on in various areas (medical, sensors, etc.).

Pete C.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:28:56 GMT, the renowned "Pete C."
wrote:

Dave wrote:

Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK) I'm curious
what current industry is similarly motivated to develop miniature
mechanical mechanisms? I'm talking about metalworking here -- not
silicon wafer etched nano-bots. Thanks.

Um, mechanical watch making still exists, it's just been relegated to
the high end of the market. There is also plenty of micro machining
going on in various areas (medical, sensors, etc.).

Pete C.

I read a story in an airline magazine about some guy in China who
makes wris****ches entirely by hand, a handful per year. He gets a
decent sum for each one (especially for China), at least $10K US IIRC,
maybe more, and he's got a long waiting list.

Mind you, you can pay around that much for an off-the-shelf Breitling
or Blancpain.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

Dave wrote:
Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK) I'm curious
what current industry is similarly motivated to develop miniature
mechanical mechanisms? I'm talking about metalworking here -- not
silicon wafer etched nano-bots. Thanks.

As far as scale goes, closer to watchmaking:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bayare...?yguid=4254039

http://www.baemclub.com/

Some of the fellows build scale cars with working
engines, transmissions and running gear. Incredible
work.

And what's wrong with silicon wafer etched nano-bots?

At night I use my WWII era Monarch Lathe and Atlas shaper, plus a motley
collection of taiwanese mills and other machines, to build the plasma
etchers and PECVD tools I use at the university to make much smaller stuff.
Like a fluid pump 60 microns wide, a gas turbine wheel and stator housing
100 microns across, and torsion spring mechanisms less than a micron thick.
All silicon and glass materials.

Life is good!


"Dave" wrote in message
oups.com...
Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK) I'm curious
what current industry is similarly motivated to develop miniature
mechanical mechanisms? I'm talking about metalworking here -- not
silicon wafer etched nano-bots. Thanks.

Dave wrote:

Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK)


Not even close! The Swiss watch industry is stronger and healthier than
ever. Mostly high priced items though. It's just the cheap watches
that have been replaced with quartz movements.

Some of the high priced watches have been fetching prices that have
previously been unheard of. And especially the most complicated watch
movement ever invented and ever produced, the "tourbillion", is now
produced in limited edition quantities by a number of companies.

The Tourbillion mechanism was invented more than 200 years ago by
Abraham-Louis Breguet.

It compensates the earth's gravitation, which has a negative effect on
the precision of a watch. The Tourbillion ensures that the watch keeps
perfect time.

The Tourbillion is one of the most difficult watches to make and is
extremely complex and cost-intensive.

The Tourbillion system consists of assembling all the escapement parts -
pallets wheel, pallets and balance - in a small mobile cage that rotates
in one regular cycle in one direction (one rotation per minute), thus
passing by every position. In a nutshell, the tourbillion is a device
whose regular rotations effectively cancel the negative effects of the
pull of gravity on the rate of mechanical watch movements.

The new tourbillions are fetching prices of $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 a
piece and over. Most of the companies that make these fine pieces have
names you have never heard of. Like Breguet, Girard-Perregaux, Chopard,
Jacob & Co., Audemars Piguet, Patek-Phillipe, Roger Dubuis, Vacheron
Constantin, Bovet, Armand Nicolet, Jaeger-LeCoultre and many others.

http://www.fines****ches.com/roger-dubuis-10635.html
http://www.jacobandco.com/tourbillion1.htm, their model with 15 ct. in
diamonds costs $245,000.00
http://www.lussori.com/Chopard-L-U-C...lion-2885.html
http://www.lussori.com/Girard-Perreg...1820-1820.html
http://www18.mawebcenters.com/manfredi/item545572.ctlg
http://www.tic-tock.com/php//Display...WATCH_ID=19389
http://www.tic-tock.com/php//Display...WATCH_ID=17716
http://www.fines****ches.com/breguet-11169.html $122,900.00
http://www.fines****ches.com/breguet-11167.html

And many more.
--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

Are these chronometers? I love the beauty of mechanical watch mechanisms.
Karl

"Abrasha" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

Since mechanical watchmaking has been obsoleted (AFAIK)


Not even close! The Swiss watch industry is stronger and healthier than
ever. Mostly high priced items though. It's just the cheap watches that
have been replaced with quartz movements.

Some of the high priced watches have been fetching prices that have
previously been unheard of. And especially the most complicated watch
movement ever invented and ever produced, the "tourbillion", is now
produced in limited edition quantities by a number of companies.

The Tourbillion mechanism was invented more than 200 years ago by
Abraham-Louis Breguet.

It compensates the earth's gravitation, which has a negative effect on the
precision of a watch. The Tourbillion ensures that the watch keeps perfect
time.

The Tourbillion is one of the most difficult watches to make and is
extremely complex and cost-intensive.

The Tourbillion system consists of assembling all the escapement parts -
pallets wheel, pallets and balance - in a small mobile cage that rotates
in one regular cycle in one direction (one rotation per minute), thus
passing by every position. In a nutshell, the tourbillion is a device
whose regular rotations effectively cancel the negative effects of the
pull of gravity on the rate of mechanical watch movements.

The new tourbillions are fetching prices of $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 a
piece and over. Most of the companies that make these fine pieces have
names you have never heard of. Like Breguet, Girard-Perregaux, Chopard,
Jacob & Co., Audemars Piguet, Patek-Phillipe, Roger Dubuis, Vacheron
Constantin, Bovet, Armand Nicolet, Jaeger-LeCoultre and many others.

http://www.fines****ches.com/roger-dubuis-10635.html
http://www.jacobandco.com/tourbillion1.htm, their model with 15 ct. in
diamonds costs $245,000.00
http://www.lussori.com/Chopard-L-U-C...lion-2885.html
http://www.lussori.com/Girard-Perreg...1820-1820.html
http://www18.mawebcenters.com/manfredi/item545572.ctlg
http://www.tic-tock.com/php//Display...WATCH_ID=19389
http://www.tic-tock.com/php//Display...WATCH_ID=17716
http://www.fines****ches.com/breguet-11169.html $122,900.00
http://www.fines****ches.com/breguet-11167.html

And many more.
--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

The modern equivalent:
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/

I built a real Atomic Watch once, based on a miniature EG&G Rubidium
physics package. The battery pack needed to operate the
temperature-control heater was about the size of a clock-radio.

jw

This may be of interest:
http://www.tp178.com/jd/watch-school/1/article1.html

wrote in message
oups.com...
The modern equivalent:
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/

I built a real Atomic Watch once, based on a miniature EG&G Rubidium
physics package. The battery pack needed to operate the
temperature-control heater was about the size of a clock-radio.

jw

On 6 Oct 2005 05:03:52 -0700, wrote:

The modern equivalent:
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/

I built a real Atomic Watch once, based on a miniature EG&G Rubidium
physics package. The battery pack needed to operate the
temperature-control heater was about the size of a clock-radio.

jw

Hey Jim,

I recall very well in 1953 going on a special day trip to the local
high-school (I was in grade 8). A lot of the people in the little
town where I lived already had black and white televisions, but I had
still another couple of years to go to before seeing my first true
coloured TV. The trip was to see a demonstration of physics by two
gentlemen from a place called Bells Labs, which I didn't associate at
the time with Bell telephone! Anyway, one of the demonstrations was
about some new device called a transistor. They showed a really large
scale lab demo of one in operation, and then stunned us by controlling
the candle-power of a 150 watt lamp with a transistor about the size
of a school eraser. We were amazed.
But THEN one of these guys said that they would be used to make
coloured TV's in the future, and that someday a "chip" smaller than
the "eraser" would have ALL the electronics to operate that TV (no
hardware such as knobs, or the CRT), but that the cooling required
would be the size of an average refrigerator!! I've never forgotten
how stupid we thought that was! Not the heat sink part, but that you
could shrink all those vacuum tubes onto the head of a pin!! TV's
were nearly the size of a small fridge anyway, so that part wasn't
amazing.
Boy, how wrong both he and we were, eh!?!

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario

That might have happened even without transistors. Vacuum-tube circuits
can also be miniaturized using cold-cathode emitters instead of hot
filaments; plasma TVs are a common example. This was the first big step
from about 10 years earlier:

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq96-1.htm

jw

Dave

Depends on what you mean by equivalent. If you mean equally time
consuming, detailed and complex, there are lots of hobby machinists out
there doing incredible work. If you mean also equally lucrative to 18th
and 19th century watchmaking you want to look at developmental
machinists for places like SLAC or satellite makers. Look for the
intersection of prototype production, new problems, and high value
results. I once worked with a machinist at Tektronics that you could
wave your hands and he could produce it in metal. Some of the mechanisms
he produced you needed a loupe to appreciate. Worked on Ferrari engines
in his spare time, because he enjoyed doing some low tolerance work :-)

Jim