Mechanical watch

The mainspring that powers the watch, a spiral ribbon of spring steel, is inside a cylindrical barrel, with the outer end of the mainspring attached to the barrel. The force of the mainspring turns the barrel. The barrel has gear teeth around the outside that turn the center wheel once per hour — this wheel has a shaft that goes through the dial. On the dial side the cannon pinion is attached with a friction fit (allowing it to slide when setting the hands) and the minute hand is attached to the cannon pinion. The cannon pinion drives a small 12-to-1 reduction gearing called the motion work that turns the hour wheel and hand once for every 12 revolutions of the minute hand.

For the same rate of oscillation, the duration of run, runtime or power reserve of a mechanical watch is mainly a question of what size of mainspring is used, which is, in turn, a question of how much power is needed and how much room is available. If the movement is dirty or worn, the power may not transfer from the mainspring efficiently to the escapement. Service can help restore a degraded runtime. Most mechanical watch movements have a duration of run between 36 and 72 hours. Some mechanical watch movements are able to run for a week. The exact duration of run for a mechanical movement is calculated with the formula
${\displaystyle n_{2}={\frac {n_{1}\cdot z_{1}}{z_{2}}}}$[10]
where ${\displaystyle z_{1}}$ is the number of barrel teeth, ${\displaystyle z_{2}}$ is the number of center pinion leaves, ${\displaystyle n_{1}}$ is the number of revolutions of the barrel, and ${\displaystyle n_{2}}$ is the number of revolutions of the center pinion — the run duration.

The center wheel drives the pinion of the third wheel, and the third wheel drives the pinion of the fourth wheel. In watches with the seconds hand in a subsidiary seconds dial, usually located above the 6 o'clock position, the fourth wheel is geared to rotate once per minute, and the second hand is attached directly to the arbour of this wheel.

The movement of a chronograph pocketwatch from the 1880s

The fourth wheel also drives the escape wheel of the lever escapement. The escape wheel teeth alternately catch on two fingers called pallets on the arms of the pallet lever, which rocks back and forth. The other end of the lever has a fork which engages with an upright impulse pin on the balance wheel shaft. Each time the balance wheel swings through its center position, it unlocks the lever, which releases one tooth of the escape wheel, allowing the watch's wheels to advance by a fixed amount, moving the hands forward. As the escape wheel turns, its tooth pushes against the lever, which gives the balance wheel a brief push, keeping it swinging back and forth.

The balance wheel keeps time for the watch. It consists of a weighted wheel which rotates back and forth, which is returned toward its center position by a fine spiral spring, the balance spring or "hair spring". The wheel and spring together constitute a harmonic oscillator. The mass of the balance wheel combines with the stiffness of the spring to precisely control the period of each swing or 'beat' of the wheel. A balance wheel's period of oscillation T in seconds, the time required for one complete cycle (two beats), is

${\displaystyle T=2\pi {\sqrt {\frac {I}{\kappa }}}\,}$

where ${\displaystyle I\,}$ is the wheel's moment of inertia in kilogram-meter² and ${\displaystyle \kappa \,}$ is the stiffness (spring constant) of its balance spring in newton-meters per radian. Most watch balance wheels oscillate at 5, 6, 8, or 10 beats per second. This translates into 2.5, 3, 4, and 5 Hz respectively, or 18000, 21,600, 28,800, and 36,000 beats per hour (BPH). In most watches there is a regulator lever on the balance spring which is used to adjust the rate of the watch. It has two curb pins which embrace the last turn of the spring, holding the part behind the pins motionless, so the position of the curb pins determines the length of the spring. Moving the regulator lever slides the curb pins up or down the spring to control its effective length. Sliding the pins up the spring, shortening the spring's length, makes it stiffer, increasing ${\displaystyle \kappa \,}$ in the equation above, decreasing the wheel's period ${\displaystyle T\,}$ so it swings back and forth faster, causing the watch to run faster.

A separate set of gears called the keyless work winds the mainspring when the crown is rotated, and when the crown is pulled out a short distance allow the hands to be turned to set the watch. The stem attached to the crown has a gear called the clutch or castle wheel, with two rings of teeth that project axially from the ends. When the stem is pushed in, the outer teeth turn the ratchet wheel on top of the mainspring barrel, which turns the shaft that the inner end of the mainspring is attached to, winding the mainspring tighter around the shaft. A spring-loaded pawl or click presses against the ratchet teeth, preventing the mainspring from unwinding. When the stem is pulled out, the inner teeth of the castle wheel engage with a gear which turns the minute wheel. When the crown is turned, the friction coupling of the cannon pinion allows the hands to be rotated.

If the seconds hand is co-axial with the minute and hour hand, that is it is pivoted at the center of the dial, this arrangement is called "center seconds" or "sweep seconds", because the seconds hand sweeps around the minute track on the dial.

Initially center seconds hands were driven off the third wheel, sometimes via an intermediate wheel, with the gearing on the outside of the top plate. This method of driving the seconds hand is called indirect center seconds. Because the gearing was outside the plates, it added to the thickness of the movement, and because the rotation of the third wheel had to be geared up to turn the seconds hand once a minute, the seconds hand had a fluttering motion.[11]

In 1948 Zenith introduced a watch with a redesigned gear train where the fourth wheel was at the center of the movement, and so could drive a center seconds hand directly. The minute wheel, which had previously been at the center of the movement, was moved off center and drove the minute hand indirectly. Any fluttering due to the indirect gearing is concealed by the relatively slow movement of the minute hand. This redesign brought all the train gearing between the plates and allowed a thinner movement.[12]

Jewels serve two purposes in a watch.[17] First, reduced friction can increase accuracy. Friction in the wheel train bearings and the escapement causes slight variations in the impulses applied to the balance wheel, causing variations in the rate of timekeeping. The low, predictable friction of jewel surfaces reduces these variations. Second, they can increase the life of the bearings. In unjeweled bearings, the pivots of the watch's wheels rotate in holes in the plates supporting the movement. The sideways force applied by the driving gear causes more pressure and friction on one side of the hole. In some of the wheels, the rotating shaft can wear away the hole until it is oval shaped, eventually causing the gear to jam, stopping the watch.

In the escapement, jewels are used for the parts that work by sliding friction:[17]

• Pallets - These are the angled rectangular surfaces on the lever that are pushed against by the teeth of the escape wheel. They are the main source of friction in a watch movement, and were one of the first sites to which jewels were applied.
• Impulse pin - The off center pin on a disk on the balance staff which is pushed by the lever fork, to keep the balance wheel moving.

In bearings two different types are used:

• Hole jewels - These are donut shaped sleeve bearings used to support the arbor (shaft) of most wheels.
• Capstones or cap jewels - When the arbor of a wheel is in the vertical position, the shoulder of the arbor bears against the side of the hole jewel, increasing friction. This causes the rate of the watch to change when it is in different positions. So in bearings where friction is critical, such as the balance wheel pivots, flat capstones are added at each end of the arbor. When the arbor is in a vertical position, its rounded end bears against the surface of the capstone, lowering friction.

The number of jewels used in watch movements increased over the last 150 years as jeweling grew less expensive and watches grew more accurate. The only bearings that really need to be jeweled in a watch are the ones in the going train - the gear train that transmits force from the mainspring barrel to the balance wheel - since only they are constantly under force from the mainspring.[21] The wheels that turn the hands (the motion work) and the calendar wheels are not under load, while the ones that wind the mainspring (the keyless work) are used very seldom, so they do not wear significantly. Friction has the greatest effect in the wheels that move the fastest, so they benefit most from jewelling. So the first mechanism to be jeweled in watches was the balance wheel pivots, followed by the escapement. As more jeweled bearings were added, they were applied to slower moving wheels, and jewelling progressed up the going train toward the barrel. A 17 jewel watch has every bearing from the balance wheel to the center wheel pivot bearings jeweled, so it was considered a 'fully jeweled' watch.[18] In quality watches, to minimize positional error, capstones were added to the lever and escape wheel bearings, making 21 jewels. Even the mainspring barrel arbor was sometimes jeweled, making the total 23. When self-winding watches were introduced in the 1950s, several wheels in the automatic winding mechanism were jeweled, increasing the count to 25–27.

It is doubtful whether adding jewels in addition to the ones listed above is really useful in a watch.[22] It does not increase accuracy, since the only wheels which have an effect on the balance wheel, those in the going train, are already jeweled. Marine chronometers, the most accurate portable timepieces, often have only 7 jewels. Nor does jeweling additional wheel bearings increase the useful life of the movement; as mentioned above most of the other wheels do not get enough wear to need them.

However, by the early 20th century watch movements had been standardized to the point that there was little difference between their mechanisms, besides quality of workmanship. So watch manufacturers made the number of jewels, one of the few metrics differentiating quality watches, a major advertising point, listing it prominently on the watch's face. Consumers, with little else to go on, learned to equate more jewels with more quality in a watch. Although initially this was a good measure of quality, it gave manufacturers an incentive to increase the jewel count.

Around the 1960s this 'jewel craze' reached new heights, and manufacturers made watches with 41, 53, 75, or even 100 jewels.[21][22] Most of these additional jewels were totally nonfunctional; they never contacted moving parts, and were included just to increase the jewel count. For example, the Waltham 100 jewel watch consisted of an ordinary 17 jewel movement, with 83 tiny pieces of ruby mounted around the automatic winding rotor.[23]

In 1974, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in collaboration with the Swiss watch industry standards organization Normes de l'Industrie Horlogère Suisse (NIHS) published a standard, ISO 1112, which prohibited manufacturers from including such nonfunctional jewels in the jewel counts in advertising and sales literature. This stopped the use of totally nonfunctional jewels. However, some experts say manufacturers have continued to inflate the jewel count of their watches by 'upjeweling'; adding functional jeweled bearings to wheels that do not really need them, exploiting loopholes in ISO 1112.[22] Examples given include adding capstones to third and fourth wheel bearings, jeweling minute wheel bearings, and automatic winding ratchet pawls. Arguably none of these additions adds to the accuracy or longevity of the watch.