subject: How Does a Self-winding Movement Work in Luxury Watches [print this page] How Does a Self-winding Movement Work in Luxury Watches
If you are over 30s, you must have the watch which needs you take time to wind it and hear sounds when doing so. And I am sure that you must feel it is disturbing and often forget to do it and then at the urgent time, you fail to read time.
However, the advent of self-winding movement changes everything. And you must discover that it brings you much more convenience and appreciate this invention very much.
When it comes to self-winding movement, there is a person we should know. He is a watchmaker called Abraham Louis Perrelet - the first one who studies on self-winding movement. And then, Hans Wilsdorf put this technique into industrial application in his Perpetual system in 1931. Having their and their followers' efforts, a great deal of luxury watchmakers developed self-winding movement in their designs very soon.
Though many people enjoy the profound benefits by just reading the time through this kind of watches instead of winding watches frequently, many of them are ignored of how a self-winding movement works.
We have a clear remember of sound made by spring toys in childhood. The similar sound of your mechanical watches is also caused by spring the power. It is a wrapped around spring tape in your watch and the metal cylinder coming in flat form is called a barrel. Usually, at the center of the barrel, there is a shaft which is closely connected with one end of the spring. And outer end of spring is fixed to the wall of the barrel. In this case, the wrapped spring can unwind to release the elastic energy. As for why spring can slowly release the stored power accumulated, it is because that the spring is bound by the gears of the movement.
Well, the automatic movement mechanisms apply the energy of our daily movements. That is to say, the rotary motion of a metallic mass in semicircular shape provides the impulse of the watches.
It sounds very simple. However, the existed friction between the rotor and the barrel is not that easy to cancel. And that is what diminishes the energy or power of watches. To reduce the waste of energy, it is essential to find the best transmission system. And then, the advent of the inverter helps a lot for inverter makes it possible to capture the energy from the motion of the rotor regardless of direction of rotation.
After knowing how a self-winding movement works, you will appreciate the advantage of technology.
