BDLJ
4653
Efficiency testing
Oct 19, 2008,22:48 PM
John,
As usual, your insights are invaluable. In this case, I agree that I don't think you can defeat the physics of the situation.
As an aside, and this is pure speculation and commentary concerning winding efficiency:
Just say you were manufacturing a new movement and wanted to compare your automatic system with anothers for efficiency. My suggestion would be to use a control mainspring and attach it to the winding system. At a given rate of rotation (rad/sec), you could then determine how many rotations to fully wound. This could be repeated for faster and slower rotations to give you graph demonstrating the spread of winds to full mainspring power. From there you could draw your own conclusions, particularly if you used a super common and well understood movement like an ETA 2892 as a control/comparison.
This is a relatively low-tech way of doing it. Hooking the rotor up to a tiny electric motor could also give you a mini-dyno.
But I am hopeless at electronics and software....
Comments:
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Yes. SJX's observations are correct. THIS is a movement of great importance.
By: bernard cheong : October 18th, 2008-18:00
The placement of the power gathering pinion off to the edge, away from the centre is of incredible significance. This will be the very first movement to do it. Complex and beautiful stuff can be placed over the movement to bring us all sorts of wonderful ...
not the first, but possibly the last...
By: ei8htohms : October 19th, 2008-01:05
Hello Bernard, I'm gonna have to disagree strongly with your observations about the significance and particularly "innovation" of using a peripherally mounted rotor. Citizen attempted this in the '60s with little success and so did Patek Philippe (Cal. 35...
I know of no universally agreed upon testing methods
By: ei8htohms : October 19th, 2008-08:47
Hi Kong, There may be quantitative tests used by engineering schools or other disinterested organizations to measure the efficiency of an automatic winding mechanism, but I am not aware of them or what they would involve. One can only assume that differen...
further technical observations
By: jfsuperior : October 19th, 2008-07:39
John, As a watchmaker I appreciate your technical input and I raise similar concerns though I would like to see the Bucherer movement in my hands to reach any definitive conclusions. But, I've attached a photo I stitched together of three different automa...
thanks Jack, interesting info about the Perrelet design
By: ei8htohms : October 19th, 2008-09:05
Hi Jack, I also would like to see the Bucherer movement in person, but it would take some kind of quantitative testing or substantial anecdotal reporting from wearers and watchmakers working on the movement to convince me of how ell it actually works. I'v...
