The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Exactly what the topic says: What are the different types of watch movements?

I would like to know about all of the different ones, but if not, then i at least wanna know what a Perpetual movement is.

Thanks,
cRaSiAn1030

OK, I guess this one's cue Roff

Let's start with the easy stuff - quartz and mechanical. You know what that is because there was a thread from you a few days ago.

Within quartz there are is regular quartz and thermo compensated quartz. Breitling uses SuperQuartz which is their version of thermo compensated, and that uses a temperature sensor to adjust the timing to reflect the different quartz frequency at different temperatures.

There are also some strange movements based on light and stuff - but let's leave them for now.

Within mechanical watches there are manual and automatic - manual need to be wound by hand, automatics wind by movement of the wrist.

That's pretty much it for movement types, the rest are referred to as 'complications' - additional features that serve various purposes in addition to telling the time.

At the most basic level is the date and variations on that - day / date, big date (two windows or an oversized window with each digit on a separate date wheel), etc. At a similar level of complexity is the small seconds - the second hand is not central, but is on a sub dial. There is also a second timezone hand - an additional hour hand - sometimes even third or even fourth timezone indication.

Moving up slightly is the chronograph - stop watch, with additional minute and second hands, and often an hour hand. Generally these are controlled from two pushers, though sometimes only one pusher is needed.

Variations on the chronograph are the flyback chrono which resets to 0 without having to be stopped first and the rattrapante or split second chrono which has two chrono seconds hands one of which stops to indicate split times and then 'catches up' to the first one when restarted.

Additional complications are the addition of moonphase - a 29 1/2 day indicator to reflect the cycles of the moon and also the addition of month and / or week of the year. This is where we start to get closer to perpetuals.

A regular date indication assumes that there are 31 days in every month, so they need to be adjusted every time there is less than 31 days. A semi-perpetual is capable of automatically adjusting for these shorter months, but not for February 29th, so it has to be adjusted once every four years. A full perpetual takes that one step further and can adjust for February 29th, so it only needs to have the date adjusted 3 times every 400 years (the 00 years that aren't leap years). This usually has an indication on the dial of which of the four years it is, and often also a season indicator.

There are some additional complications - any number of different ones, but the most famous is the tourbillon. This was originally invented in order to try and asjust for the fact that watches ran faster or slower depending on their position - vertical or horizontal. These days the function isn't really needed, but it is seen as the ultimate demonstration of a watchmaker's ability.

There are also mechanical watches that are capable of providing an alarm, a 15 minute repeater (that rings hours and quarters) and a minute repeater (that rings hours, quarters and minutes).

That's a very quick summary, but hopefully helps.

wow, thanks for that long descriptive reply! Definetly learned a LOT! I can almost guarantee you that i'll be coming back to view this post over and over again. O yah and one question, so basically the tourbillion is a movement thats dead on? I mean if its not affected if the watch is up or down, left or right, then shouldn't it be?

Well done Roff, that's an excellent and very well-written summary.

Gotta love the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourbillon

On another note, check out the none time telling double tourbillion: http://www.romainjerome.ch/en/mouvements/rj-one-double-tourbillon-en.aspx

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What is the temperature range they use to adjust watch. I mean, in fine winter -20C weather does my life go faster or slower ?

Great post there Roff!

I was looking to see if you'd missed anything vital, but you didn't! That'll help the newbies no end. Well done!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Great write up Roff!


About 10 seconds/day slower - but less if you wear your watch as your wrist warms it up! Here's a chart showing the variance.



The following is a small (and slightly edited) section of a very long piece about thermocompensation on WUS.
http://forums.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=2087

In the digital count adjustment method of thermocompensation, the crystal frequency is allowed to drift with temperature, just as the crystal in a non-thermocompensated watch does. However, an independent sensor is used to measure the temperature of the crystal. Given a precise knowledge of the frequency vs. temperature characteristics of the crystal, the digital count that is derived from the crystal oscillations is then adjusted to correct for the temperature effect. For a movement that counts to 32,768 every second (i.e., a standard 32 kHz movement), subtracting one count every 16 minutes (960 seconds) will increase the rate by two seconds per year. Specifically, if the second hand were advanced each time the counter reached 32,768 for 959 times in a row, and in the 960th second, it was advanced after counting to only 32,767 (one less than normal), then this would increase the rate by 1.0 seconds per year. With this in mind, a conversational version of the digital logic might go something like this: 'The thermistor tells me that, for the last 959 seconds, the crystal temperature averaged 20 C. I know that, at this temperature, the crystal vibrates 1.7 ppm, or 54 seconds per year, more slowly. Therefore, since one count in 960 seconds equals 1.0 seconds per year, I will need to adjust the count by 54. So, for this 960th second, I will tell the stepper motor to move the second hand after the crystal has vibrated 32,768 - 54 = 32,714 times.'

Interesting footnote to the article is "Note: Breitling has designated all its thermocompensated watches as 'SuperQuartz' (SQ) since 2002. For reasons that are unclear, Breitling specifies its SuperQuartz movements to 15 seconds per year, even though we have no evidence that they differ from the ETA Thermoline models which are specified to 10 seconds per year."

So it looks like the SQ is even better than we thought!

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To address a few items from when I was sleeping......

A tourbillon is never going to be 'dead on' - no mechanical watch can be - a 4 Hz movement like the movements in a Breitling means that the balance wheel goes through nearly 350,000 cycles in a 24 hour period - an error of even 1 cycle will result in an error of almost 2 seconds a week. Mechanical pieces just cannot be made that accurate. A tourbillon helps to compensate for the significant differences to reduce variance, but it can't be eliminated.

Mario - I know that double tourbillon was discussed yesterday which is why it was front of your mind, but it's really not that impressive as tourbillons go - there are much better ones - maybe I can find the time this weekend to write something up on some of the more remarkable ones.

Bruce Reding's article on quartz technologies that Sharkmouth referenced is an exceptional piece of writing - I encourage anyone remotely interested to read it.

In terms of Breitling's claims being less than ETA's for the movement, I have never heard a satisfactory explanation for that. Although the movements are modified the thermo compensation module is not changed, so I have no idea why they don't stick to the ETA claim. Maybe it's just a conservative estimate to avoid too many regulation requests.

Thanks for the kind comments on my post guys.

That would be great, I don't know much about them. It's certainly interesting considering the prices they go for

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Great description, Roff! You know, as I was entering the
second hour of reading your treatise, I actually felt as if
I was in the middle of "War and Peace." Just kidding! Very helpful.
I'm truly glad you guys take the time to help educate us. Keep
it up.

Steve

to what In2Deep and drax said. Great appreciation to Roff for writing all these great posts educating us.

I'll add my thanks too Roffensian and to Sharkmouth for the explanation on thermocompensation.

Very interested too in your comment "There are also some strange movements based on light and stuff - but let's leave them for now"...

If you get a spare moment and have nothing else to do

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Happines is Good Health and a Bad Memory.
"Ingrid Bergman"

haha ya, you got that right Tim, it'd be really interesting to learn about light movements, whatever those are!

I knew I was opening a can of worms there......

Take a look at this - it explains it better than I can - http://www.europastar.com/europastar/wa ... ghtpow.jsp

The most famous watch is probably the Citizen Eco-Drive.