The Breitling Watch Source Forums

What about an in house movement makes it special compared to ETA?

If ETA sold watches, then would these all be in house movements since they make the movement?

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End of Discussion.

There are a number of topics on in house movements vs. generic.

Essentially a manufacture (the name for a company that produces its own movements), designs and manufactures its own movements for its own use. As such it is much more exclusive and is generally produced to a higher level of fit and finish because they aren't mass production. ETA produce more than a million movements annually to designs that are so old they are no longer protected by copyright and where quality is secondary to efficient mass production.

Manufactures can produce high numbers of their movements - Rolex is a good example, but they are still exclusive to Rolex and not mass market pieces. ETA is part of Swatch group and are not in house - a watch company like Omega that is also part of Swatch group cannot claim that they use in house movements when they have ETA in them (Omega does have its own in house movements) because those movements are the same as the ones used by hundreds of other companies.

Here's an old thread of mine on this subject -

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19932&hilit=ramblings

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Thanks Roff and Driver, good information!

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End of Discussion.

A little bit off topic... But I have been wondering this for a while. Where does Breitling stand in terms of modifying an ETA movement compared to other brands. Are they one of the most modified?

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sco
Breitling Chrono Superocean
Omega Aqua Terra 8500
Rolex Submariner Date Ceramic

That's not a particularly easy question to answer because Breitling don't reveal what they modify, but as best I can tell the modifications are fairly significant - replacing some pieces as a matter of course and replacing others if they don't meet Breitling's tolerances (which are tighter than ETAs). Breitling also starts from the highest grade of movement that ETA supply (of 3 or 4 grades depending on the movement).

Nope, omegas co-axial is the most modified ETA movement I think. As for breitling..........anything and everything that is done to the movement can be ordered from eta. Including engraving of the name on the rotor. Who knows, maybe breitling doesn't do anything but pop them in. But j can't say what or what they do or don't do to the movements. I don't work there

If Breitling was plopping ETA manufacture movements in their watches, why on earth would they be spending so much on their own manufacture facilities. We have been down this road before and there are several folks here who know based on their expertise and experience that Breitling starts with an ebauche and not a finished movement.

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SHARKMAN

The Omega 2500 was ETA 2892 based, heavily modified including the coaxial escapement.
The 8500 is in house.
As far as I understand at least.

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"It is just a matter of time!"

That's correct.

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SHARKMAN

Well the last two sentences are undoubtedly correct, the rest, not so much.

By definition the parts have to be essentially the same - you can't take a piston out of an engine and replace it with a ham sandwich - it has to be replaced by another piston.

The tolerances that Breitling accepts are tighter than anything that ETA produces, which is why such a tiny percentage of movements submitted by Breitling to COSC fail.

Can you provide anything to back that up?

Here we gooooooo......


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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SHARKMAN

Breitling purchased Kelek in the 1990s to have better/larger facilities to rework/add to the raw Swatch Group ebauches which become Breitling Calibers and to up the ante on the quality of their watches. Kelek reworks/refinishes/adds to the ETA/Valjoux movements and also produces modules for same unique to Breitling.

But you could be right, the whole "Kelek Affair" might have been a multi-million dollar ruse.

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SHARKMAN

Breitling has also acknowledged producing parts for ETA calibers for years as part of the process of preparing for a world where ETA didn't supply ebauches / chablons. Let's face it, ETA is just a name when it comes to the movements themselves, they are way past copyright protection so no need to buy an ETA movement from the Swatch Group.