TAG Heuer Mikrogirder: The Inside Story

Concept watches- like concept cars- can take one of two forms: either an outlandish styling exercise to win a few headlines, or a genuine preview of where a brand is headed. The TAG Heuer Mikrogirder, announced last week in Geneva, is definitely the latter. In fact, perhaps the least interesting part of the Mikrogirder story is the headline number of 5/ 10,000ths of a second. It’s easy to be blase about such a stunning achievement, but if TAG Heuer had simply reached this milestone by developing a  faster evolution of the Mikrotimer (1/ 1,000ths second), then the story would not be as significant.

No, the real story of the Mikrogirder is the development of a new system for regulating mechanical watches and the beginnings of a push to change the way that Swiss watches are certified.

To get the inside word on the Mikrogirder, Calibre 11 spoke with TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, technical guru Guy Semon (Vice President of Sciences and Engineering at TAG Heuer) and lead designer Christoph Behling. The Mikrogirder is the third ultra-high frequency watch in 12 months and is certainly the most interesting.

Heuer, TAG Heuer and Fractions of Time

People unfamiliar with the history of Heuer/ TAG Heuer may wonder why the brand is suddenly obsessed with high-accuracy chronographs- and fair enough if your memory of TAG Heuer starts and stops with the ETA-powered quartz range of the 1980s and 90s. But the reality is that the brand has always been about measuring small fractions of time.

The high-frequency stars of today’s range both take their name from high-precision timers of the past. The original Heuer Mikrograph (above) was the world’s first stopwatch capable of showing 1/ 100th second accuracy. The Heuer Mikrograph (below) was a digital timer introduced in 1966 and was the world’s first timepiece capable of showing accuracy to 1/ 1000th of a second

In fact, if you go back the early 1980s, TAG Heuer sold more timing instruments than it did watches. While this heritage was pushed to the background in the early TAG Heuer years, it’s been the central focus of the last decade:

• 2003 Microtimer: First watch accurate to 1/ 1000th second (quartz)
• 2004: Timing equipment for Indianapolis 500- accurate to 1/ 10,000th second
• 2006: First mechanical watch accurate to 1/ 100th second (Carrera Calibre 360)
• 2008: First mechanical watch accurate to 1/ 10th of a second (Grand Carrera Calibre 36)
• 2011: First mechanical watch accurate to 1/ 1000th of a second (Mikrotimer)

Many people don’t know that still today there is a  TAG Heuer Timing division that focuses solely on providing professional timing equipment.

The point of all of this is simple: To stand out in a crowded market, Swiss high-end brands look for ways of demonstrating their mastery of mechanical complications, whether it be a tourbillon, a minute-repeater, a moonphase or something else.  Heuer/ TAG Heuer doesn’t really have a strong history in these complications (although there have been some moonphase and tide-indicator watches), but it does have a strong and credible history in high- accuracy timing, stemming from the connection with motor sport.

The point here is not that there are customers out there desperate to make sure that their eggs are boiled precisely, but that there is a reasonable belief that if you are able to make the world’s most accurate chronograph, then you should know a thing or two about making a wrist watch that keeps time accurately, even if the chronograph is never used.

The Limit of Huygens

With that context, let’s take a look at the Mikrogirder Concept.

Every mechanical watch on sale today follows the principles established by Christiaan Huygens, who is credited with developing the regulating mechanism for watches around 1660- the hairspring and the balance wheel. Energy is sent to the balance wheel which rotates in one direction, only to be brought back to its original position by the hairspring- it’s these oscillations that control the time-keeping ability of a watch and can be measured in terms of beats per hour, or in hertz.

The math is quite simple- if you want to accurately measure 1/ 100th of a second, then you need the watch to beat 100 times every second, which is equivalent to 6,000 beats per minute or 360,000 beats per hour. How do you get a watch to beat faster? Guy Semon explains:

“If you take a standard hairspring on a standard 4hz watch, the hairspring is very large. To increase the frequency, you need to cut the spring to increase the rigidity”

Jean-Christophe Babin adds: “To get more speed you lessen the angle of oscillation, the but at some point there is no longer any rotation- the movement locks”.

And this makes sense, even if you aren’t technically minded. Imagine two toy Slinky springs at the top of a staircase. The Slinky that is 40 cm tall will travel more slowly down the stairs than one that is 20cm tall…but a Slinky too small won’t go anywhere.

And in the context of watches, the point at which the Huygens system is no longer effective is around 600-700 hertz (recall that the Mikrotimer is 500 hertz). TAG Heuer have pushed the Mikrotimer to this speed, but found it unworkable, meaning that if the company wanted to move past the benchmark set by the Mikrotimer, it would need to think of a new way of regulating time.

Mikrogirder- a New Approach

The Mikrogirder movement is based on the in-house TAG Heuer Mikrograph movement, which you see below. The magic of this movement is the dual-chain approach: a separate escapement for the watch (top right, 28,800 beats per hour) and the chronograph (bottom right, 360,000 beats per hour).

The Mikrogirder movement still uses a dual-chain approach- but instead of two traditional escapements as per the Mikrograph and Mikrotimer, you only see one, which is used for time-keeping (28,800 bph).

Instead of a balance wheel and hairsrping, the regulation of the chronograph is achieved via three micro-beams, or girders. You can see the three beams in the window below.

Jean-Christophe Babin explained the concept with the help of the model below:

“So the new system is based on beams…micro-beams. We still have the escapement wheel [below in red], but instead of 20 teeth, we have about 40 teeth and an anchor [the open-mouthed "C"  in white below], which is not a traditional anchor, but is linked the Excitatory beam [White]. There are three beams: the Excitatory beam; the Coupling beam [black]; and the Oscillating beam” [Blue].

Adds Semon:

“The anchor has a very specific geometry without pallets, and is manufactured as a beam. If you accelerate the anchor wheel you transform the kinetic energy of the anchor wheel into potential energy in the beam. Now you need an oscillator- one that’s very accurate. It’s a small beam that is calculated to have the first harmonic (the lowest frequency) at 1000hz. To reach this harmonic you need to transmit a level of energy to reach the harmonic. There’s a small contact point between the anchor beam and the oscillating beam [the coupling beam].”

So, to summarise, the three beams have the following roles:

• Excitatory beam: generates energy by transforming kinetic energy into potential energy
• Coupling beam: transforms the potential energy to the oscillator
• Oscillating beam: generates the right frequency

The Oscillating beam vibrates at an angle of only 5 degrees, allowing it to move very fast. The Mikrotimer oscillates at 28 degrees, while most watches oscillate at over 300 degrees.

The benefit of this approach is that it allows a frequency of greater than 600-700 hertz to be generated- in the case of the Mikrogider Concept, the movement produces 1,000 hertz, meaning 7.2 million beats per hour and accuracy to 5/ 10,000ths of a second, or 1/ 2,000th.

The other benefit is reduced wear and power consumption, as Jean-Christophe Babin explains:

The Mikrogirder consumes about half the energy of a traditional regulator at the same frequency- so, at 500hz the power reserve instead of being 4 minutes is 8 minutes. This is because you have fewer parts in motion, and about 20% fewer components, so there is less wear and less use of energy”.

The Design

When it came to the looks of the Concept Mikrogirder, TAG Heuer designer Christoph Behling says that he wanted to design a watch that matched the concept of combining a stop-watch and a wristwatch and you can see how this has been achieved.

The bottom half of the case is pure Carrera- a simple round dial with elegant lugs. But about halfway up the case, the shape changes, turning instead into a stop-watch.

The design is very effective, as well as being practical- it wouldn’t have been possible to mount the chronograph pushers and crown on top of the case if a traditional Carrera case had been used.

It’s a clever design and is different enough to the Mikrotimer, without being overly flashy.

Commercialising the Mikrogirder

The key question on the Mikrogirder is whether the watch will make it past the “Concept” stage and onto the wrists of well-heeled owners. While the design is obviously new and still in development, there don’t appear to be any obvious barriers to commercialising the watch.

The main challenge is the construction of the micro-beams themselves, as Guy Semon says:

“The real challenge will be to develop the tooling so that each beam is crafted in the same specification. Because they are so small, you need superlative production quality.”

Perhaps a future evolution will see the three-beam system constructed as a single component to make the production tolerances easier.

Putting these challenges aside, the architecture of the movement appears sound and without any obvious technical issues needing to be overcome.

To Infinity…and Beyond?

It’s easy to forget that just over 12 months ago, the most accurate mechanical watch that you could buy was the Grand Carrera Calibre 36, at 1/ 10th of a second. Last January, TAG Heuer went to 1/ 100th and then in March to 1/ 1000th. And here we are in January 2012 at 5/ 10,000ths…so where does it end?

One thing for sure is that TAG Heuer will continue to push the limits of splitting time. As Babin says:

“We’ve tested from 50 hz and we pushed it up to 3000 hz.  So we don’t know the upper limits, but it’s certainly above 3000 hz and we know that it’s truly ideal for high frequencies….this system covers the field of ultra high-frequency from 50 -3000hz. It could find an application in the Mikrograph and we could use it in the Mikrotimer and of course the Mikrogirder.”

At one end, 3,000 hertz is three-times as fast as the Mikrogirder and implies a movement accurate to 1/ 6000th of a second. Using the beam system in a watch like the Mikrotimer would simplify the movement, while at the same time increase the power reserve.

Where you won’t see the system is in a “standard watch”- at speeds of less than 50hz, the traditional system is superior, as if the angle of oscillation is increased too much in order to slow the movement, the system does not work.

Certifying the Chronograph

If you own a high-end Chronometre, you will be comforted by the fact that an independent body- Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, or “COSC”- certifies the performance of your watch, so you know that you got what you paid for. But here is something you may not know- guess who certifies the accuracy of a Chronograph? Surprisingly, no-one does.

There is no-one who will confirm that your 1/ 10th chronograph ever performs to that level. Yes, you can have a watch with a chronograph function COSC certified, but COSC don’t check the chronograph-  only the watch function.

One of the challenges of certifying a chronograph is this: a traditional chronograph shares its transmission chain with the watch- a single escapement. As you might expect, as you pump energy into the Chronograph, this takes energy from the watch, which can be enough to push a Chronometre outside COSC standards. This may explain why brands don’t push to certify the chronograph, because if they did it could place the COSC certification of the watch at risk.

But if you’re going to have a family of ultra-high accuracy watches, then you need someone to certify that fact, not only to give customers assurance on what they buy, but also to separate “real” fractions of time from “estimates” of fraction of time. I’m yet to understand how the Montblanc 1/ 1000th movement can accurately measure to that precision with a movement that “only” moves 100 times per second. But without a COSC-like body, how will customers know who is precise and who is not?

TAG Heuer have begun to push for the “double-certifying” of chronographs- both the watch and the chronograph. And that problem of draining power from the watch? Doesn’t exist for TAG Heuer, which has a patent on the dual-chain system described earlier, which means that pushing the chronograph button draws zero power from the watch.

Conclusion

The TAG Heuer Mikrogirder is an incredibly important development in high-speed watch-making, not because it simply goes faster than the previous model, but because it delivers that accuracy in a totally new way and one that has no clear limit in sight. It’s not the accuracy that makes the Mikrogirder special: it’s how it delivers that accuracy.

Combing this innovation with a unique movement architecture that isolates the watch from the chronograph means that TAG Heuer is uniquely position to keep exploring the boundaries of cutting time- and of proving to customers that the watch does what it claims. Make no mistake, TAG Heuer want to “own” the space of high-precision chronographs- and leave the chimes and perpetual calendars to others.

Some will say that this is all pointless, as 99.9% of watches don’t need 50hz and therefore won’t benefit from the micro-blade system. But pushing the limits of technology has always been about the 0.1% which do and for that reason, the Mikrogirder is a fascinating development that is sure to throw up more surprises in the future.

 

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