Week 26 & 27 Jan. 17-29, 2011

Hello again. Little slow with the update here. Kinda busy with working at Panerai and going back to school after. Pretty difficult not to be super lazy when I actually get home. But anyways, I got a few things done the last couple weeks so here they are.

Well the last update I had milled the barrel bridge and balance bridge out. The next Monday I got working on the barrel bridge recesses. By 8 that night I had ruined the barrel bridge. It wasn't an execution problem but a design one. The spot I recessed for the click was too deep and I milled into the spot for the reverser wheel. Needless to say I had to make another one. It has become clear to me that I need to make every part 2 times before I get it right. Knowing and accepting this has helped me not lose my sanity after things go wrong.

So anyways, here is the bridge from the top side.

In the next 2 pictures you can see the recess for the click and also the click spring. I didn't really want it to be visible so it will be underneath the click. You can also see beside the post of the click, the jewel that holds one of the reverser wheels. I put it there to have easy access and movability. 

Another thing I was doing was trying to get the bearings for the barrel in and functional. The bearings are made of bronze and will provide a bit more strength than jewels or brass would. This also allows for some adjustment of endshakes on the barrel. As of now they are working but I think they don't have enough side shake so it is a little tight. I'll have to work on that this week. Here you can see the bearings in bronze on the dial side barrel bridge.

As you can also see in the previous I made the holes for the jewels of the reversing wheels. These wheels are part of the power reserve system. I needed to reverse the direction of the barrel to the intermediate wheel on the other side. That intermediate wheel will carry the satellite wheel which is the heart of the power reserve. When the barrel is turning (during normal watch function) the satellite and intermediate wheel will turn around the barrel arbor, which will (through another wheel and rack) turn the power reserve indicator in one direction. When the arbor turns (during the winding of the watch) the intermediate wheel will be blocked by the barrel, but the satellite wheel will turn on the spot. This will turn the gears in the opposite direction, moving the power reserve indicator the opposite way. 

So if that doesn't confuse the entire shit out of you well you are smarter than most. It really isn't easy to depict what I'm talking about in pictures because when it is assembled you can't see all the parts to make an explanation. But I will try my best to show the parts. Here you can see the reversing wheels without the barrel and intermediate wheel. The wheel on the right connects with the barrel teeth (see poorly drawn red teeth). the two reverser wheels connect together, and then the one on the right connects to the intermediate wheel (see poorly drawn blue teeth)

Hopefully this makes sense to someone. If not well I guess ask some questions and I'll try to answer. You might be asking where all the other parts are for the power reserve. Well I didn't have them set up yet so you'll have to wait. Here are a couple more photos of the reversing wheels from the dial and bridge side.

The sad thing about all of this is I had another design flaw. I had set the position of the two reversing wheels too close to each other so when I originally put the jewels in the gears were meshing too much and would not turn smoothly. So after I moved one over (only 0.15mm) I had them working just fine. Heres a video of the system, sorry for the extremely poor quality video. Maybe I'll have to look into a video cam...

Kind of a confusing explanation I'm aware. Oh well.

That's it for now. One other thing is that I noticed I had set my blog for comments from registered users only. Well I changed that so any and all comments are welcome!

Week 22-25 Dec. 20/2010-Jan. 15 /2011

Well it's been a while so I guess I should get back into updating regularly. I went back to Canada for the Christmas holiday so there wasn't really anything to update until now. After realizing I have just about the worst luck in flying history (I was on this flight), I got back to Switzerland on the 5th of January. Most of that week was gone and I was jet-lagged so I did not get much done.

And as of last week our class is doing another internship. I am working for Panerai in the after sales service department. It has been great so far with a good learning environment and nice colleagues. The first week we started servicing customer watches. Then at the end of the week for some reason I was given a special watch. It is the watch of famed explorer Mike Horn! I had never heard of him but I guess he's a big deal... here's his website. Anyways I guess Panerai sponsors him so it is cool I get to work on his watch. It is a chronometer watch (not to be confused with a chronograph) and will have to be certified by COSC. COSC is the chronometer standards testing center and only watches that have been tested by them can have the word 'chronometer' on them. Click those links if you have no clue what a chronometer or it's standards are. This isn't an education blog!

The nice thing about Panerai is that it is located in Neuchatel so I am still able to go back to WOSTEP after finishing work there some of the nights. This past week I started with a few simple things on the AMS-1. I centered and enlarged the original holes for the jewels of the escape, third, and fourth/center wheel bridges. Using the M1 it was easy to center these holes to guarantee the wheels will sit perfectly straight in the watch. The holes have to be 0.01mm smaller than the jewel to ensure a good fit. Even one hundredth smaller/larger and the jewel will be too tight/loose. But thanks to the M1 it is much easier. I didn't take any pics of the bridges, but I'm sure you will see them plenty in the future.

Next I set out making the balance bridge and the barrel bridge. My goal is to have a running watch by the end of February so I have to get a lot of parts made. First I made the balance bridge. And as I have had many many nagging requests to include coins in the photos, I will try my best to remember.

Here is a picture in the middle of making the balance bridge. You can see the undercut and the spot for the incabloc jewel, and also the spot for the locating pins and screw hole.

And here it is after all the milling. I still have to enlarge the hole for the incabloc, do the cut outs for the stud holder, make the screw holes for the swan neck, and the recess for the screw. Lots to do!

Next I started making the barrel bridge. This is the most difficult bridge to make as it has more recesses to mill out. Like all the other bridges, I started with the underside. Here you can see the cut out for the center wheel.

Also on the underside is the cut out for the barrel, winding stem and winding pinion. In the next two photos you can see how I checked the size of the locating pins. The size of the hole on the mainplate is exactly 1.000mm so I needed to mill the pin to fit exactly. So I used a jewel of size 1.00mm and slowly reduced the size until it fit. Worked great with all the pins for all the bridges. All the bridges fit great on the mainplate with very minor adjustment.

And here you can see all the bridges together. Of course the barrel and balance bridge are not quite finished yet but hopefully by next week I should have them close...

Cya next week!