The Tourbillon 1 pre-order is off to the races and so is the production of the first pre-order round watches.
It's always exciting when bridges get put into production and the Tourbillon 1 movement bridges are an integral design element of the watch.
The team at THE+ have been working on bridge manufacturing for orders that will deliver in February and everything is running like clock work… Pun intended.
There is an incredible amount of preparation for the bridges and each step of the way the bridge becomes more and more refined. First we start with a blank block of material that is then processed by the CNC machine. The primary squares, circles and shapes are cut out and the correct thickness of the bridge is defined. After the initial CNC work of the bridges are completed they are then placed in a tumbler filled with sand and the movements are tumbled for some time to removed any rough edges left from the CNC process.
Next the bridges go back into the CNC machine to have the 30 degree angles of each square finished and following this process all excess material is cut away leaving a nice rounded movement bridge.
Following the CNC work we then start with the laser etching process. With the laser we complete two parts of the decoration process. The laser is used to cut out the indented closed squares of the movement. These are the squares that are closed but have a sand blasted look to them, due to the depth and the type of finish they can only be completed by laser. At the same time we also finish any word markings with the laser such as Swiss Made, the jewel count and the COSC chronometer certified number.
The machining process of the bridge is then complete and it is then delivered to Marcella.
Marcella will be doing all hand brushing to the Tourbillon and given this is a hand process the time involved is quite long. After she is finished with brushing the movement bridges can then be thoroughly cleaned and prepared for chemical wet plating (gold, silver, and grey movements) or PVD coating which is done on the blue movement bridges.
While Marcella awaits all bridges to be ready for brushing she is keeping busy with other in-coming components. We have received the screws for the screw balance wheel regulation and this means as a quality control expert she is checking the them to ensure they are within acceptable tolerances. These things are incredibly small and measure just 0.4mm. This level of movement development is called T0 and is an integral part of movement production because if one knows and understands all tolerances from each stage of development they will have a more stable movement and quickly be able to identify where any issues might arise. Almost all movement makers outsource T0 as this is an extremely time consuming process, we manage this in-house to ensure we deliver the most stable and reliable movements possible.
I hope you have enjoyed the update this week. Things are moving along and each and everyday there are more and more components arriving which is keeping us on our toes.
We are continually receiving orders for Tourbillon 1 on a daily basis. Should you have any questions about ordering, special payment of shipping requests not found at checkout please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Until next time…
Landon Stirling