Watch escape wheel and fork. Mechanical watches - how they work
A mechanical watch is one that uses a mechanical mechanism to measure time, as opposed to modern quartz watches, which operate on the movement of quartz. This movement is driven by a spring, which must be wound on a periodic
basis. Its force is transmitted through a series of gears to power the flywheel, a weighted wheel with amplitude rotation of the pendulum back and forth at a constant speed. They say the clock “ticks” creates a sound that is characteristic of all mechanical watches. Mechanical watches developed in Europe in the 17th century, and the very first appeared in the 15th century.
Mechanical watches are generally not as accurate as modern electronic quartz watches and require periodic cleaning by a qualified watchmaker. Since the 1970s, quartz watches have taken over most watch market, and mechanical watches are now mostly of high quality production, purchased for aesthetic reasons, appreciating their fine craftsmanship, or as a status symbol.
The internal mechanism of a watch, excluding the dial and hands, is called mechanical movement. All mechanical watches have five parts:
The driving force that stores mechanical energy to power the watch.
A gear train called a running train, which has the dual function of transmitting the spring force to the balance wheel and summing the swing from the balance wheel to obtain the unit of second, minute, and hour. Separate part gear transmission is called remote work, allows the spring to push the hands to set the time.
A balance wheel that oscillates back and forth. Each swing of the pendulum takes exactly the same amount of time. This is an element of timing in hours.
The escapement, which has the dual function of maintaining balance, vibrates, giving it a push with each stroke, and allows the watch's gears to advance or "run" a certain amount with each stroke. The periodic stopping of the gear train on the escapement makes the "ticking" sound of a mechanical watch. 
The dial display is usually a traditional dial with rotating hands to show the time in a natural usable form.
Additional functions on watches, in addition to the main ones, are traditionally called complications. Mechanical watches may have these complications:
Self-winding - in order to eliminate the need to wind a watch, this device is driving force watch and winds automatically using natural movements of the wrist, with a weight rotation mechanism.
Calendar - displays the date and day of the week often, month and year. A simple calendar clock does not register for different month lengths, requiring the user to reset the date 5 times a year, but a perpetual calendar clock takes this into account, and even leap years. The annual calendar does not make adjustments leap year, and treats February as a 30-day month, so the date should be reset to March 1 of each year, when it incorrectly says February 29 or 30.
Alarm - A signal or buzzer that can be set to sound this moment time.
Chronograph is a watch with additional stopwatch functions. Buttons on the body start and stop the second hand and reset it to zero, and usually several sets display the time elapsed in larger units.
A function on military watches, a mechanism that stops the second hand while the watch is being set. This allows the clock to be synchronized with accurate time. It's very common feature at many watches.
Moon phases - a set of flickering moon phases from the lunar surface on a rotating disk.
The wind indicator or power reserve indicator is basically on an automatic watch, a sub-dial that shows how much energy is left in the spring.
Repeater - a clock that works like a clock chime can be heard by pressing a button. This rare complication was originally used, with the arrival of darkness before artificial lighting, to tell the time in the dark. These complex movements are currently only found as novelty items in extremely expensive luxury watches.
The Tourbillon is an expensive feature that was originally designed to make the watch more accurate, but is now simply a showcase of watchmaking virtuosity. In a regular watch, the balance wheel oscillates at different speeds due to gravitational displacement when the watch is in different positions, resulting in inaccuracy. In a "tourbillon", the balance wheel is mounted in a rotating cage so that it experiences all positions equally. The gear is usually displayed on the face to show it off.
Mechanical watches are a mature technology, and most ordinary watches have the same parts and work in the same way.
Springs and movement, work
The spring that powers the watch is a spiral band of spring steel, inside a cylindrical barrel, with the outer end of the spring attached to the barrel. The barrel has teeth around the outer axis, which turn the central wheel once an hour - this wheel has a rod that runs through the dial. The set on the cannon side of the gear is attached via a friction fit (allowing it to slide when setting the hand) and the minute hand is attached to the cannon gear. The pinion gun drives the small 12-in-1 reduction gear and is called the work of the motion, which turns the hour and minute wheel once for every 12 revolutions of the minute hand.
Train wheels 
The center of the wheel drives the third wheel gear and the third wheel drives the fourth wheel gear. In watches with a second hand, the child seconds dial is usually located above at the 6 o'clock position, the fourth wheel is directed to turn once per minute, and the second hand is attached directly to the arbor of that wheel.
Descent
The fourth wheel also controls the escapement wheel from the anchor. The wheel teeth of the escape alternately catch on two fingers called pallets on the coat of arms of the pallets lever, which swings back and forth. The other end of the lever has a fork that engages a vertical impulse pin to balance the shaft wheel. Each time the balance wheel swings through the center position, it unlocks a lever that releases one tooth of the escape wheel, allowing the watch wheel to advance by a fixed amount by moving the hands forward. As the escape wheel turns, its tooth presses on a lever, which gives the flywheel a brief push, keeping it swinging back and forth.
Flywheel
The balance wheel keeps the time for the watch. It consists of a weighted wheel that rotates back and forth, which returns to its central position as a fine helical spring, a spring or "hair" spring. The wheel and spring together make up a harmonic oscillator. The mass of the pendulum is combined with the spring rate to precisely control the period of each swing or "beat" of the wheels. Most watch balance wheels fluctuate at 5, 6, 8, or 10 beats per second. This results in 2.5, 3, 4 and 5 Hz respectively, or 18000, 21600, 28800, 36000 and oscillations per hour or hour of time. Most watches have a control lever on the balance spring that is used to regulate the speed of the watch. It has two rein pins, which cover the final turn of the spring, and can be slid up or down to control its effective length.
Keyless operation. 
A separate set of gears called keyless operation, winds the spring when the crown rotates, and when the crown is pulled out close allows the arrows to be turned on to set the time. The stem attached to the crown has a mechanism called a clutch or wheel lock, with two rings of teeth that project axially from the edge. When the rod is retracted, the outer teeth must be turned until the ratchet wheel on the top of the mainspring of the barrel turns, which turns the shaft that the inner end of the mainspring is attached to, winding the spring rigidly around the shaft. Spring pawl prevents the spring from unwinding. When the stem is pulled out, the inner teeth of the wheel lock engage with the gear, which turns into a minute wheel. When the head is turned, the friction linkage of the gun gear allows the hands to move to change the time.
Center seconds
If the seconds hand is coaxial with the minute and hour hands, that is, rotated at the center of the dial, this mechanism is called a "center seconds" or "sweeping seconds" because the second hand sweeps across the minute track on the dial.
Initially, the center of the seconds hands were driven by a third wheel, sometimes through intermediate wheels, engaging on the outside of the top plate. This method of driving the second hand is called indirect center seconds. Because the gearbox was off the plate, it adds to the thickness of the movement, and because the rotation of the third wheel must be upward to engage the second hand once a minute, the seconds hand has a slight movement.
In 1948, Zenith introduced a watch with a modified gear train, where the fourth wheel was at the center of the movement, and could therefore drive to the center of the second hand directly. At that minute, the wheel, which had previously been at the center of the movement, was moved away from the center, and the wheel moved indirectly in minutes. Any flutter due to indirect engagement is hidden by the comparatively slow movement of the minute hand. This reconstruction brought all the trains to mesh between the plates and allowed finer movement.
Bearing gems and keystone are used in the axle ledger wheel.
Ordinary bearing "stone"
Stone bearings were invented and introduced into watches by Nicolas Fatio around 1702 to reduce friction. They did not become widely used until the mid-19th century. Until the 20th century, they were not made from natural stones. Watches often had to be inserted with garnet, quartz, or even glass decorations; only in hours highest quality sapphires, rubies, or diamonds are used. In 1902, a process for growing artificial sapphire crystals was invented, making jewelry much cheaper. Jewelry in modern watches are all synthetic sapphires or (usually) rubies made from corundum (Al 2 O 3), one of the hardest substances known. The only difference between sapphire and ruby is that various impurities have been added to change the color; there is no difference in their properties as bearings. The advantage of using jewelry is that they were super hard smooth surfaces and have a lower coefficient of friction with metal. The static coefficient of friction of steel on steel is 0.58, while sapphire on steel is 0.10-0.15.
Why are they used
Jewelry serves two purposes in a watch. Firstly, friction can be reduced and accuracy can be improved. Friction in the train's bearings and descent causes small changes in the impulses applied to the balancing, causing changes in the timing speed. The low friction surfaces of the jewels reduce these differences. Secondly, they can increase bearing life. In bearings, the turning wheel rotates the watch in holes in the plates that support the movement. The lateral force applied by the drive gear causes more pressure and friction on one side of the hole. In some of the wheels, the rotating shaft may eventually wear into the hole until it becomes oval-shaped, and the clock stops.
Watch operating instructions
Setting the current time:
1. Place the crown in the extreme position. To do this, pull out the winding crown until the second click so that the second hand stops exactly at the moment when it points to 12 o'clock.
2. Rotate the crown (crown) so that the indicators move clockwise to set the current time.
3. Return the crown to its original position.
Please note: On some watch models, the wheel is attached to a thread and in order to set the time and date it must be unscrewed several turns counterclockwise. Back in the same order, setting the time, press the wheel (overcoming the resistance of the spring) and twist it several turns clockwise.
Date setting:
1. Place the crown in the middle position, pulling the wheel out to the first click
2. Rotate the crown counterclockwise to set the current date.
3. Return the crown to its current position.
It is not recommended to set the current date and day of the week between 23:00 pm and 3:00 am. In this case, the current readings may not change the next day, which may cause damage to the watch mechanism.
Setting the day of the week:
The days of the week are marked on the dial English language:
Monday - MON
Tuesday - TUE
Wednesday - WED
Thursday - THU
Friday - FRI
Saturday - SAT
Sunday - SUN
NOTE: When using a self-winding watch, it is recommended to wear the watch on your wrist for at least 8 hours a day to fully wind the mainspring. When starting to use or after a long break, you should wind the watch. To do this, you need to make 10-20 turns clockwise, after removing the winding crown until it clicks 1 click. Further, during everyday use, simply shake the watch, as a result of which the winding flywheel will set the mechanism in motion. To avoid damage to the self-winding device or disruption of its operation, it is not recommended to make more than 30 turns of the crown or rotate it counterclockwise when winding the watch manually.
Watch care
To ensure the long life of your watch, maintain it regularly by observing the following conditions:
Protect your watch from shock, exposure to extreme (high or low) temperatures, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight(for watches with fluorescent parts of the case, this will lead to a gradual disappearance of the fluorescent color).
Do not open the case or remove the back cover yourself.
Store your watch in a dry place.
Never use easily volatile substances such as gasoline or solvents to treat your watch and strap. Avoid exposing your watch to aerosols from spray bottles, adhesives, paint, etc. Chemical reactions caused by these materials will damage the polishing of the case and the strap finish. Use only a dry, soft cloth, or a soft cloth moistened with a neutral detergent and water solution.
Make sure to fasten the strap around your wrist correctly, allowing your finger to fit between your wrist and the strap.
Regular contact with sweat or moisture on the strap, as well as prolonged contact with dry hot air, can lead to damage - rupture or cracking of the strap. (Allowed: during operation, natural abrasion of the coating of the case and watch strap).
Do not set the date and day of the week between 23:00 pm and 03:00 am. (The day of the week and date set on the display during this period may not change the next day, which may lead to damage to the mechanism).
This wristwatch is resistant to household water (splashes of water, sweating of the hand, rain, snow). Immersing the watch in water is strictly prohibited, otherwise the watch will be excluded from warranty service.
Types of mechanisms:
Mechanical watch with self-winding
The main advantage of self-winding mechanical watches is that they do not need to be wound every day. This is the most common given time type of mechanical watch. The spring of an automatic watch is wound by a rotor (inertial sector) that turns around the central axis of the watch. It is not necessary to make special movements with your hand, everyday ones are enough normal movements to wind the automatic watch.
Automatic winding is an additional and rather complex device. Naturally, along with complexity, the likelihood of breakdowns also increases. Automatic watches are thicker and heavier than regular watches. Need in the sector big size limits the use of automatic winding in women's watches. Complicating the mechanism and using a rather expensive tungsten weight increases the cost of the watch. Self-winding watches are sensitive to shock.
If a person has one watch that he wears every day, and this person leads an active lifestyle, then automatic winding is a good choice for him. But if a person’s physical activity is low, then the watch will not have time to wind up and will stop.
Mechanical hand-wound watch
The energy source of a mechanical watch is a spiral spring located in a barrel with a serrated edge. When winding the watch, the spring is twisted, and when unwinding, the spring sets the drum in motion, the rotation of which sets the entire watch mechanism in motion.
The main disadvantage of a spring motor is the uneven speed of unwinding of the spring, which leads to inaccuracy of the watch. Also, for mechanical watches, the accuracy of movement depends on many factors, such as temperature, position of the watch, wear of parts and others. Therefore, for mechanical watches, it is considered normal to deviate from the exact time by 15-45 seconds per day, and the best result is 4-5 seconds per day.
Manually wound mechanical watches must be wound manually using the crown. When fully wound, the watch can operate without additional winding from 24 to 72 hours, depending on the mechanism.
The energy source for operating the watch is a battery designed to last for several years (usually 3 years). Quartz watches are highly accurate; the deviation from the exact time can be only a few seconds per month. Quartz watches do not need to be wound.
Types of glass wristwatch:
Swiss watches usually use mineral or sapphire glass.
Sapphire crystal- Made from artificial sapphire, this glass is currently the most durable and scratch-resistant glass. Sapphire glass is the most expensive, it has a characteristic shine that lasts for many years and is very scratch resistant. The hardness of this glass reaches 2200-2300 on the Vickers scale - thus, leaving a mark on it is indeed very difficult, but still possible.
Sapphire glass is a rather arbitrary term. Firstly, it is not glass, but a crystal, and secondly, sapphire in in this case artificial, having the characteristics of natural sapphire: hardness and transparency.
Sapphire crystal is very difficult to scratch, so it retains its “new look” for a long time. But you need to know that it is easily scratched by a diamond (for example, a ring with a large diamond or a banal diamond nail file). And it breaks even more easily - there is no need to test the endurance of the sapphire crystal of your watch - it is very fragile.
Mineral glass- somewhat less scratch-resistant glass than sapphire glass. Mineral glass in watches is inferior to sapphire glass in its characteristics. According to the Vickers scale, its hardness is no more than 500-800, which means that mineral glass is easily scratched. Over time, such watch glass becomes dull, and it is impossible to restore the original shine. However, the characteristics of mineral glass allow it to be resistant to shock and impact.
Tourbillon
The tourbillon is one of the most complex watch complications, along with the minute repeater and perpetual calendar. But if the mechanisms of the latter are usually hidden from prying eyes, then the tourbillon is usually made visible for review; it is a wonderful decoration of the watch.
In 1795 genius inventor clock mechanisms Abraham-Louis Breguet found a solution to one of the most big problems clock mechanisms of that time. He found a way to overcome gravity and the associated motion errors. At that time, the watches were far from the accuracy that even the simplest and cheapest wristwatches now show.
The reason for this was the gravitational field of the earth. When the pocket watch lay strictly horizontally, the entire mechanism was located perpendicular to the axis of gravity. But such clear moments did not happen often in their lives, and the pocket watch spent most of its time in a special pocket, in a vertical position, when gravity acted on all the parts, forcing the spring to fight gravity or vice versa. And since the mathematical center of gravity of the part almost never coincided with the physical one, the clock’s progress “went into disarray” even more, depending on the position of the clock in space.
The word itself tourbillon, French, means whirlwind. Full, author's title Regulate a Tourbillion. The official birthday of the tourbillon is April 14, 1801. This is the date put by Breguet in a letter to the French Minister of the Interior, announcing his new invention and asking him to secure a patent for 10 years.
The very idea of a tourbillon is quite simple - in order to compensate for the influence of gravity on the moving and balanced parts of the mechanism, namely the balance, spiral and escapement, you need to make it rotate around its own axis inside the watch case! Any good engineer could have thought of this, but Breguet's genius is that he was able to bring it to life.
Chronograph in watches - why and why?
Watchmaker George Graham is considered to be the inventor of the chronograph. He was a fan of horse racing, and for measuring short periods of time he invented a mechanism that did this with amazing accuracy for that time.
Unfortunately, we often have to deal with the fact that special watch terms are used incorrectly in practice. Particularly “popular” of this kind are the names “chronometers” and “chronographs” that are consonant, but at the same time pointing to the unequal technical properties of watches - many people confuse and mistakenly identify these different types products. Chronometers are considered to be watches that are highly accurate: their movement depends little on operating conditions such as changes in the position of the case, temperature fluctuations, mechanical vibrations, small shocks and shocks. In order for a watch to be assigned the status of a chronometer, its mechanism must successfully pass strict tests, and in confirmation - receive a certificate of compliance with established standards: thus, any watch, including chronographs, can become a chronometer.
What is the difference between a chronograph and a stopwatch? It would seem – why use a chronograph in a watch if there is a simple and reliable thing that records fractions of a second. Let us explain: a chronograph is an additional mechanism in a watch, which successfully coexists with the watch mechanism in the case of a wristwatch. The second difference is that the performance of chronograph functions such as starting, stopping and resetting the result does not in any way affect the operation of the main watch mechanism. The watch does its job - it is always ready to show you what time it is, while the chronograph does its job.
Almost all modern chronographs have two buttons: “Start/Stop” (near the number “II”) and “Reset” (near the number “IV”). The first button, when pressed for the first time, starts the first and most important chronograph counter - the central second hand, and it begins counting time; the second time you press the button, the arrow stops; at the third, it continues its movement. The second button is there to reset the result and return the chronograph second hand, as well as the hour and minute counter hands to their original position (it can only be pressed when the stopwatch is off). As for single-pusher chronographs, they are rather the exception these days.
Chronographs in watches are appreciated by people associated with sports and have won the love of ordinary fans of mechanical watches.
Hello, Dear friends. Today we’ll talk about automatic watches. Watch companies do everything to make their watches as good and practical as possible. And each company has self-winding models. So What is a self-winding watch? Let's find out more in this article.
A self-winding watch is a self-winding watch. That is, when we walk, do everyday things, talk using gestures, such a watch winds itself. Our movement and hours are used to their advantage. The English inventor John Harvard first built a self-winding mechanism into his watch in 1924. Since then, all watch manufacturers have begun to use this technology in some of their models.
The hands of mechanical watches are driven by a special spring. In a regular watch, it needs to be wound periodically using the crown. In self-winding watches, this function is performed by a special mechanism. Its basis is the sector. Imagine a round disk divided in half. So, this sector resembles the shape of half a disk, the center of gravity of which is shifted to the edge. It is placed on a special support, which allows it to rotate freely in different directions. We move, and the sector rotates. Through this support and gears, the energy from the rotation of the sector is transferred to the spring, and winds it. To start the spring, the disk must have good inertia. To do this, it is made with the maximum possible diameter, and along the edge of the sector there is a heavy half-ring made of tungsten alloy.
To prevent such a massive disk from breaking the spring, watches of this type are protected against breakage. That is, when the spring is wound up to its maximum, its edge simply begins to slip, preventing further tension. Slippage can be accompanied by barely audible clicks. The sector rotates 360 degrees in both directions. The spring winds in one direction, and rotates idle in the other direction. Some models use a method where the disk drives the spring in both directions, but this is a rather complex mechanism.
The advantage of such watches is that they do not need to be wound. At modern rhythm life, you can simply forget to do this. The spring maintains its fully wound state at all times, which improves precision. During the day, such watches are usually fully wound. If you don’t wear your watch often, you can wind it in special boxes from time to time. Such boxes have a mechanism that rotates the watch, thereby winding it.
If you are an active person who values your time, then this watch is simply made for you.
