Breitling’s output of new models at Baselworld 2016 was small compared to recent years, but featured some notable innovations, including an all-new, proprietary case material in the Avenger Hurricane and, in the new, limited-edition Breitling Heritage Superocean Chronoworks, a re-engineered movement with a 100-hour power reserve.
Breitling Replica UK Chronoworks department, headquartered at the brand’s manufacture in la Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, is the equivalent to a team of engine-tuning experts in the automotive world, tasked with developing and testing performance-upgrading technologies that can subsequently be introduced in series-produced watches. Breitling describes the well-equipped Chronoworks lab as a “think tank and a test bench for tomorrow’s technologies.” For this new watch, the experts at Chronoworks turned their attention to Cheap Breitling Replica in-house, COSC-chronometer-certified base Caliber 01, ultimately incorporating five new technological advancements that enhanced the movement’s energy efficiency, reduced friction, and pumped up its already impressive 70 hours of winding autonomy to a full 100 hours.
The first optimization involved the movement chassis. To reduce friction due to the pivoting of the arbors, Breitling Replica Watches constructed the movement chassis from a high-tech ceramic —hexagonal boron nitride — which was already being used as a solid adjuvant in high-performance engine lubricants, but is applied here for the first time in mechanical watchmaking. Thanks to an extremely low friction coefficient, the arbors can pivot directly in the baseplate and bridge holes without any wear or energy loss – and also without any lubricant, thereby eliminating 11 of the base movement’s 47 jewels.
Contrary to what one might think, a watch movement is actually at rest for 95 percent of the time, with each “restart” resulting in a certain loss of energy. To counteract this inertia, Cheap Breitling Replica outfitted its caliber with three wheels made of silicon, a material twice as light as traditional materials used for these components, thus making them it easier to set back into motion. Breitling also revised the geometry of these wheels, made using deep-reactive iron etching, to make their structure more rigid and thus avoid any distortion of the spokes.
The escapement is the part of the movement where most of its energy losses take place. Here, breitling replica uk maintained the Swiss lever escapement used in the base movement but replaced the wheel and lever with ones made of silicon. This served to reduce weight and thus inertia, and eliminated the need for pallet jewels, thereby enhancing precision in terms of shapes. To ensure more efficient transmission of the energy from the barrel, the Chronoworks team also revised the profile of the teeth and pallets, and ensured a banking-free angular limitation of the lever to further increase reliability. The overall result is a 42% gain in efficiency for one of the movement’s most vital organs.
Balance-wheel oscillations are generally adjusted by modifying the active length of the balance-spring using pins, an operation that can disturb chronometry. The Breitling Replica Watches Chronoworks specialists opted instead for a variable-inertia balance, adjustable via four tiny gold weights situated around the rim. To free this component from temperature sensitivities and maintain the same rate precision in every circumstance, they combined a nickel felly with a cross made of brass, using the metal’s expansion/contraction to modify the inertia. When the temperature rises, the cross expands and “pulls” the felly towards the center, thus reducing inertia. This system reinterprets the principle of bimetallic balance wheels by leveraging state-of-the-art production technologies.
The first Breitling watch to showcase these advancements, from the brand’s Superocean Héritage family, launches this year in a 100-piece limited edition. The Breitling Superocean Héritage Chronoworks is an all-black model with a new matte ceramic case, measuring 46 mm in diameter and featuring a ratcheted, rotating divers’ bezel and a curved sapphire crystal with glareproof coating on both sides. The “Volcano”black dial has pointed hour-markers echoing those on the 1957 Superocean, this watch’s vintage inspiration. Its tricompax design features 30-minute and 12-hour subdial counters for the 1/4-second chronograph function, along with a small seconds subdial and a date window at 4:30. The transparent caseback provides a view of the performance-optimized Chronoworks movement and its black winding rotor.