How a Mechanical Watch Works: Part Two

William Reichwein — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:24:43 +0000

In Part One, we went over the importance of winding a watch, how the mainspring worked, and the basics of the internal components of a mechanical watch. Remember, cheap watches and expensive watches alike have the same internal components, it is only the quality of said components that separates the two categories of watches from each other.

As you can recall, the mainspring is stored with a lot of potential energy from the winding of the watch, and it slowly releases kinetic energy in order to make the watch function. However, without further control, there would be no stable rate of release and the watch would be completely useless. That is why a device known as a “motion works” is necessary in all mechanical watches.

A motion works essentially interprets the energy being released by the mainspring and converts it in to something that you can visually interpret, which is represented via the hands on a watch. The motion works is set up so that for every twelve revolutions of the minute hand, there is one revolution of the hour hand. This makes sense, because it takes twelve hours for the hour hand to get all the way around the clock. In addition, the motion works is actually what makes the hour and minute hands move. The precise control is managed by the gearing of the motion works and by another part called the escapement.

The escapement is an important part of managing the energy flow of the mainspring. It consists of an escape wheel, pallet and fork, and balance assembly, which includes a number of small parts including a balance wheel. Altogether, the escapement ensures the accuracy of the watch, and a properly adjusted escapement can keep time very accurately, only going off a second or two per day. Of course, this adds up and over a month or two the watch may be behind by a minute, which is why it is important to adjust the time on your watch occasionally to counter this imperfection.

This only takes in to account some of the mechanisms needed for keeping time. If the watch has other features added, such as a calendar, then there are other parts that are necessary to make this function as well. As watches become more and more complex, so will the internal machinery, which means watchmakers will have a continuous amount of new information to learn if they want to keep up with the industry.

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How a Mechanical Watch Works: Part One

William Reichwein — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:19:26 +0000

It is important to know about the things we use in our lives, and watches are no different. Digital watches are completely electronic and do not follow the same principles that a mechanical watch does, so they can be completely disregarded. Whether a particular watch belongs to the category of deluxe watches or cheap watches, the laws it follows will be uniform.

Like any mechanical object, there needs to be some kind of energy powering the product. With a watch, this power is provided by winding the watch with your fingers. Everyone knows that it is necessary to wind a watch tightly, but the physical mechanics of this escapes most people.

What you are turning with the crown is the mainspring, which is a narrow and long spring that ultimately makes all the other components in the watch move. Springs are great for storing potential energy, which is just one of many types of energy that exists in the universe. Since the spring is so small, just a little bit of effort from your fingers results in a lot of potential energy, and not much of it is needed to power the small gears inside a watch. If one were to wind a watch fifty times bigger than themselves, it could take hours or days to wind it completely.

The mainspring is stored inside of a small container that functions as the first gear in a series of gear. It meshes with another small gear and turns that, which in turn causes another gear to move, and so on. This is the basic principle of a watch or any geared mechanism works.

As you know, it only takes a few winds for a watch to last weeks or months. If there were no further system of control, the energy would immediately be converted to kinetic energy, and the gears would spin too quickly, and the practicality of keeping time would be lost. Therefore, there needs to be something that controls the rate of spinning, and to such a degree that the rate is even, controlled, and matches what we humans have designated to be seconds, minutes, and hours. This part of watchmaking is more complicated than previous segments, but those who are trained in this art have no problem understanding and applying these principles.

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Very Cheap Watches » potential energy

How a Mechanical Watch Works: Part Two

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How a Mechanical Watch Works: Part One

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