Four Part Harmony: The Innovations of Cartier's ID 2 Concept Watch: Prelude II, ID 1

The ID One concept watch was introduced in 2009, which was an interesting time for Cartier to debut such a watch.

As we all remember, it was a very scary period economically and the luxury industry was also feeling the pinch of the stock market crash and global financial crisis (the repercussions of which are still with us today.) I'm sure that the development of ID One started well before 2009, of course, but Cartier, having invested enormous amounts of time and money into ID One, must have presented it with a certain level of feeling.

ID One was described and discussed in-depth at the time on Revolution Online (our original coverage is right here) as well as elsewhere, and there was both considerable interest as well as considerable surprise that a watch containing so many innovations would come from Cartier, which had produced it with no other partner than CSEM, the Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique. Other CSEM clients include Girard Perregaux and Patek Philippe.

As we've already seen the purpose of ID One was to make a watch which would run within the desired specifications at assembly with no need for any regulation, and which moreover would maintain its regulation without intervention during its service lifetime.

To achieve this, Cartier introduced materials intended to make the watch either less susceptible to, or completely invulnerable to, the effects of those factors which can negatively impact long term stability of rate. The watch would need to be shock resistant, unaffected by temperature, unaffected by magnetism, and free of conventional oils and greases.

The innovations were as follows:


1. A going train made of carbon crystal, with pivots set in ADLC coated bearings. The pivots in ID One are steel (except for the balance staff pivots, which are titanium) but all pivots are coated with ADLC as well. ADLC, or Amorphous Diamond-Like Carbon, is used as a lubrication coating in a wide variety of industrial applications. In watchmaking it eliminates the need for conventional oils, although it has to be applied with extremely high precision, especially on the pivots of the balance staff. Though like any lubricating coating, it will wear out eventually, ADLC can increase service lifetimes by orders of magnitude. Carbon crystal fabrication techniques also allow for very precise tolerances in manufacturing, ensuring perfect concentricity of the wheels in the train and flawless gear teeth profiles.


2. A carbon crystal cage for the escapement components, mounted on elastomeric "silent blocs." Shock can affect rate stability in a variety of ways --an impact can momentarily disrupt rate stability and in a watch which uses a conventional regulator and stud carrier, shock can shift the position of both, with extremely noticeable effects on accuracy and rate stability. While the ID One doesn't use a conventional regulator or stud carrier, the use of a shock absorption system to protect the escapement still helps avoid both damage and rate instability.


3. A carbon crystal lever and escape wheel. There are several advantages here. First, the lower inertia of carbon crystal relative to steel (the conventional material used for both parts) makes for more efficient transmission of energy from the going train to the balance. Second, carbon crystal is unaffected by magnetism. Third, the high precision and smoothness possible in DRIE (Deep Reactive Ion Etching) fabrication of carbon crystal means the critical locking and impulse surfaces of the pallets and escape wheel teeth need no oiling. Finally, what watchmakers call the "depth" of the pallets --that is, how much surface area of the pallets engages the escape wheel teeth when the pallets lock the escape wheel teeth --in a high grade watch is manually adjusted. The ruby pallets are held in their slots in the lever by shellac. The watchmaker places the lever on a plate that warms the shellac, and manually adjusts the depth of the pallet stones. With the carbon crystal lever and escape wheel, this step is no longer necessary (it is also unnecessary in watches using silicon levers and escape wheels.)


4. A carbon crystal balance. The balance in a traditional pocket watch was a cut, bimetallic balance and was poised --that is, adjusted so that there were no heavy or light spots anywhere on the rim --through a very painstaking process involving adding or removing weights from the rim (usually in the form of minute washers held on by tiny screws.) In modern Glucydur balances, the balance is laser-cut to remove tiny amounts of material where heavy spots exist (usually visible on the underside of the balance.) The precision of DRIE carbon crystal fabrication means that the balance can be made perfectly poised to begin with, eliminating the need to poise the balance before assembling the escapement. It also means that you can get creative with the design; you'll note the Cartier "C" is used for the spokes of the balance.


5. A hairspring made of Zerodur. The hairspring is subject to a number of adjustments in a classic high grade watch. The inner terminal curve must be pinned in the proper position on the collet (the part of the balance staff to which it is attached) and the outer terminal curve must be shaped so as to give the regulator index the ability to control the effective length of the spring (a fundamental determinant of the rate of the watch) without fouling the inner coils. The outer terminal curve must also be shaped to ensure minimal distortion of the concentricity of the coils during the "breathing" of the spring as the balance oscillates (in a traditional high grade watch using a mathematically correct Phillips overcoil terminal curve --also called a Breguet overcoil; Breguet invented it, but Phillips characterized the correct shape mathematically --the overcoil is raised by hand; an extremely delicate operation performed by highly trained specialists.) Finally the coils of the balance spring must be as perfectly concentric as possible --again, an operation in a high grade watch usually performed manually. None of these adjustments are necessary with a Zerodur hairspring, which comes from fabrication already perfectly centered, with an outer terminal curve that achieves, thanks to its geometry, in a flat balance spring what is usually accomplished by an overcoil. Zerodur, a hybrid glass/ceramic material originally developed for astronomical telescopes, is also extremely dimensionally stable over a wide range of temperatures, making adjustments of the watch to temperature unnecessary as well. And, of course, Zerodur is totally unaffected by magnetism. Glass balance springs are not a new idea --they have been experimented with for centuries, though never with any real success. Zerodur's combination of amagnetic material, zero coefficient (more or less) of thermal expansion, high strength, and high precision in manufacture make it, apparently, an ideal balance spring material.


6. A niobium-titanium case. This particular case alloy has mechanical properties that convert a short-term, high amplitude shock into a long-term, low amplitude one --essentially attenuating the impact, spreading it out over time, and reducing the amount of mechanical energy transmitted to the movement.

The end result is a watch that requires no regulation to position, temperature, or (thanks to the configuration of the balance spring) isochronism.

The watch has a cool beauty that seduced many of us who saw it --its combination of sleek contours and transparency recalled the timepieces for which Cartier is most famous: its mystery clocks (as well as its experiments in transparency using rock crystal cases for extra flat dress pocket watches in the 1920s and '30s.) It also seduced collectors as well --as has been widely reported, Cartier declined a seven figure offer a month after the watch was unveiled.

Though it was intellectually compelling as well as beautiful, many of us had mixed feelings. On the one hand, there was considerable surprise and interest that Cartier had with a single watch positioned itself as one of the top leaders, if not the top leader, in horological innovation. On the other hand, the fact that a watch had been made that rendered so many of the traditional craft aspects of watchmaking unnecessary was disorienting, and the prospect of a world of mechanical horology where there was no place for the hero of traditional horological precision --the regleur --was alarming. Finally, Cartier made it clear that the watch would never be industrialized and offered for sale --reassuring perhaps to those who wished mechanical horology to remain a locus of conservation for traditional horological crafts, but confusing to those of us who felt that such an expensive and elaborate re-thinking of horological basics should be available to consumers.

In the interim, however, between the introduction of ID One and ID Two, and in the aftermath of the introduction of ID Two and the Astrotourbillon Carbon Crystal, several things have become clear.

First, although both ID One and Two are concept watches and not for sale, Cartier does intend to introduce technology from both into serially produced, commercially available products --a point CEO Bernard Fornas as well as key members of the team which develop the ID watches have been at pains to make.

Secondly, Cartier intends that such technologies should complement, rather than supplant, traditional watchmaking crafts.

Thirdly, study of the ID watches is very valuable for an understanding of mechanical horology's most basic problems. It's impossible to understand the innovations in the ID watches without understanding the problems in classic mechanical horology, and to grasp the motivations behind the innovations in the ID watches is to understand classic watchmaking as well.

Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, what ID One and Two point to is nothing less than a redefinition of luxury. Traditional luxury is a product of affluence and leisure and was by and large characterized by inherent rarity of materials, inherent difficulty in manufacture, and, generally, the exhibition of extremely time and labor intensive manual craftsmanship, whether lacemaking, watchmaking, one of the traditional decorative arts like marquetry, the use of extremely costly natural floral essences in perfumes, and so on. There is, behind the ID watches, a radical redefinition of the most fundamental features of luxury --which we'll look at more closely when we've examined the innovations in ID Two. For such paradigm shift to have come from a company with global leadership in luxury is intriguing, to say the least.

Jack



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2012 09:29PM by Jack Forster.