Although traditionally An archive of similar skills and age-old craftsmanship, today’s luxury watch industry has developed a mature ability to create high-tech innovations from otherwise unrelated fields. with the watch world.
High potential strength of carbon fiber – realized in 1963 in Established Royal Aircraft, a British Army-owned research facility, for use in jet engines – now commonly used in high-end watches. Deep etching reaction-ion, developed for micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), are now also used to make silicon watch parts that have changed watchmaking thanks to their anti-magnetic properties ( metal watches with continuously moving parts that don’t like magnets).
TAG Heuer, building on a process first developed at the University of Utah, is trying to develop carbon nanotube filament, the small spirals at the center of a mechanical watch that drive escapement oscillations, which, with each oscillation, allow one tooth of the driving wheel to “escape” and advance into the hand. clock. They are said to be less fragile than their silicon counterparts; they are similarly anti-magnetic but have better shock resistance and are easy to assemble for watchmakers.
The titanium-ceramic compound found in today’s watch cases was created for dental and military use. Panerai’s Carbotech Real materials have been developed for the brake pads.
And the list goes on. Essentially, in practice, any new materials used in the watch case were not developed for the watch. Watch brands are extremely good at finding new things and incorporating it into their niche.
However, while new materials, fabrication techniques, and engineering processes have emerged densely and rapidly from the automotive and aeronautical fields, eye surgery seems to have been a rare source of technological inspiration. more ability.
However, Rolex this year turned to the laser technique used to remove cataracts in its quest to industrialize the creation of unique, flawless decorations for its dials. The latest version of the classic self-winding system Datejust model — a watch first produced in 1945 to celebrate the company’s 40th anniversary, in which tropical palm trees bend their way across a green sun-shaped dial, where the face is lighter in the center and darker at the edges in a semi-abstract fashion — using the process itself.
The palms are engraved on this sunburst dial base using femtosecond laser technology, was first developed for surgical purposes in the early 1990s.
During cataract surgery, extremely short laser pulses (one femtosecond equals a millionth of a billionth of a second) are used to cut with precise shapes into the surface of the eye, allowing removal of cataract material by the kind of height that the surgeon’s hand cannot achieve.
