The Breitling Watch Source Forums

hello everyone i just have a question.... i noticed my cousin has a rolex gmt and i just got the soh46 and theyre both black and i noticed that his rolex had alot of glare and my breitlings black face just plain looked blacker than his!!!!! so now hes saying that ar coating is really cheap...now honestly how much is the double ar coating? ohh and it is a good benefit!!!!

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chronomat evolution-blue dial
superocean heritage 46-black with mesh bracelet

It's cheap. Cheap enough that in comparison to the cost of the whole watch, it is quite insignificant.

but like how cheap are we talking $35.00 or in the $100's?

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chronomat evolution-blue dial
superocean heritage 46-black with mesh bracelet

i just cant believe rolex doesnt use ar coating!!!!!

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chronomat evolution-blue dial
superocean heritage 46-black with mesh bracelet

Who kows how much it costs a big company that does hundreds or thousands of crystals at a time. If you wanted to have it done on your own with a very high quality coating im guessing youd pay over $100.

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-RJ

Breitling generally charges less than $150 for a new sapphire crystal, so the costing can't be more than $50 or $10 at the volume they produce.

Probably adds at most 10% to manufacturing cost of a sapphire crystal - I,m guessing $3 or $4. Most of the cost of domed sapphire is the spherical grinding and polishing. AR is a double-edge sword. It takes away the one major advantage of a sapphire crystal - that is can't ordinarily be scratched except with a diamond. Perhaps thats why some manufacturers don't spec. AR. Breitling almost certainly apply a 'hardcoat' as well. But it only makes the surface more scratch-resistant. Spend a day at the beach and if it can get scratched, bet it will!

That's definitely the reason why some manufacturers only do AR on the underside of the crystal, although I've never found the AR to be 'fragile'. Clearly though it isn't as tough as sapphire crystal.

I think you may be right about the volume aspect, but the whole issue as far as I know is that its not cost effective to do just one at a time. Basically, the amount of work to do one at a time or 50 at a time is very similar, hence the exponentially higher cost of doing only one.

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-RJ

Oh yes, absolutely.

It's like anything else, if you have a process that is already up and running it's minimal additional cost to have an extra piece processed, but if you need to set up the whole thing for a one off then all the setup costs have to be covered by that one piece.

I think the AR coating on the outside is a win-win situation. If you want it keep it - keep it, if you don't - polish it off. if you polish it off you are no worse than if you had the watch with no AR on the outside to begin with. It really does make the watch much easier to see (and photograph too).

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