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5 Things to Know About the Montblanc Timewalker Chronograph 100

Montblanc unveiled the Montblanc cheap replica watches uk Timewalker Chronograph 100, a chronograph watch capable of measuring elapsed times to 1/100 second, at the 2014 SIHH watch fair in Geneva. Here are five pertinent things you should know about this innovative timepiece from Montblanc.Montblanc TimeWalker Chronograph 100 - front

1. It comes from a manufacture with an impressive chronograph pedigree.
The historic Minerva Manufacture in Villeret, which would later become part of Montblanc, was renowned for its expertise in making chronograph timepieces. In 1916, it launched one of the first mechanical stopwatches able to measure times to 1/100th of a second. Later versions of this timepiece also included a chronograph hand that completed an entire 360° sweep of the dial in just one second. The Montblanc TimeWalker Chronograph 100, a modern iteration of these groundbreaking timepieces, applies and updates this technology with its newly developed manufacture Caliber MB M66.25.

2. The watch has one movement but two balances.
Montblanc’s first big challenge in making a watch that measures intervals with 100th-of-a-second precision was that its movement required a balance that vibrates at a frequency of 360,000 vph (50 hertz). In traditional chronograph watches, one balance drives both the time display and the chronograph mechanism. Activating the “start” function creates a connection between the going train and the chronograph, which is severed when the “stop” function is triggered. Conventional chronograph calibers have a frequency of only 2.5 to 4 hertz.

The solution developed by the watchmakers in Villeret was to incorporate two balances into the movement — a large, heavy screw balance, beating at a traditional 18,000 vph (2.5 Hz) to ensure the precise rate of the going train, and a smaller balance, with the much higher frequency of 360,000 vph (50 Hz) to regulate the chronograph function.Montblanc TimeWalker Chronograph 100 - angle

Instead of being in constant motion, the separate balance for the chronograph starts to vibrate only when the “start” function is activated by a flexible, steel plate mounted behind the arrowhead of the chronograph rocker. When the “stop” function is triggered, the plate stops the smaller balance and holds it in place until the next elapsed-time measurement begins.

The chronograph function has its own barrel, which stores enough energy to measure intervals up to 45 minutes long. However, this limit can be extended indefinitely by turning the crown counterclockwise while the chronograph is running, thus adding fresh energy to its devoted barrel. The going train for the time display draws its energy from a second barrel, which stores a 100-hour power reserve.

3. It has a patented control system with a two-level column wheel and two return-to-zero mechanisms.
Montblanc devised a patented mechanism with an innovative column-wheel control and a new zero-return solution for the central 100ths-of-a-second hand. A two-level column-wheel separates the functional level for starting and stopping the chronograph from the zero-return level for the elapsed-time counters. The column-wheel has four narrow pillars and four broad ones, with alternately higher and lower switching levels positioned between them. The higher level controls the chronograph rocker: its arrowhead carries the slender steel lamella that starts and stops the finely toothed 50-Hz balance.When the chronograph is switched on, the column wheel sends an impulse to the chronograph rocker, which moves away from the high-frequency balance and transfers the impulse, via the steel lamella at its tip, to the balance, which immediately starts vibrating at 360,000 vph. When a time measurement stops, the column wheel moves the chronograph rocker toward the chronograph’s balance so that the steel lamella presses against the balance’s rim, stopping both the balance’s vibrations and the progress of the chronograph’s elapsed-time hands. The lower level of the column wheel is the switching plane for the beak of the heart-lever. This lever returns to zero the 60-elapsed-seconds hand, which is connected to the heart-lever of the 15 elapsed-minutes counter. Heart-levers and heart-cams act in the usual way to return these two counters to their zero positions.The zero-return of the 1/100-second hand occurs in a different, more innovative manner. The 1/100-second wheel has a disk with a catch. While the chronograph is running, the heart-lever of the seconds-counter wheel presses a small, arrowhead-shaped lever with a barb away from this catch. When the chronograph hands are returned to zero, the heart-lever releases the smaller lever and a spring then presses the lever against the wheel with the catch. The 1/100th-second hand is free to complete its sweep until it reaches its zero position, where it stops because the catch of its zero-return disk engages with the barb of the zero-return lever.

4. The case materials come from the world of auto racing.
The tripartite case of the Montblanc Timewalker Chronograph 100 combines a titanium and steel bezel, coated with a layer of highly scratch-resistant DLC (diamond-like carbon); a screwed titanium caseback with a sapphire window; and a case middle incorporating titanium and carbon fiber. Instead of simply gluing a carbon fiber shell over the titanium piece, Montblanc designed the case middle as a seamless, complexly structured cocoon. In this process, several dozen layers of carbon fiber, cheap watches replica for men with the fibers in each layer oriented at 90° to those in the one below it, are fused together with artificial resin at high temperature and under 10 tons of pressure to produce a compact carbon-fiber block. The case’s round sheath is stamped perpendicularly to the carbon-fiber layers to form a seamless “monobloc” which is then tightly stretched over the titanium middle piece. The monobloc’s surface has an atypical (for carbon fiber) horizontally striped pattern rather than the material’s typically uniform texture. The resulting case is lightweight yet very robust. The middle piece of the case is clamped between two pierced longitudinal titanium brackets, which transition into the characteristic skeletonized lugs of the Montblanc TimeWalker collection.

The large, crosswise-fluted crown is also made of titanium and topped by an inset mother-of-pearl Montblanc emblem. The crown is employed for manual winding in both directions:  clockwise for winding the watch’s timekeeping functions, counterclockwise for the chronograph function. In a nod to the Minerva stopwatch from 1916, the chronograph pusher is located in an unconventional position, at 12 o’clock. Auto racing influence is also evident in the black alligator-leather strap with red contrast stitching and the titanium pronged buckle.

5. The clear sapphire dial allows you to see all this technology at work.
The dial of the Montblanc Timewalker Chronograph 100 is made of transparent sapphire crystal — surrounded by a horizontally satin-finished flange calibrated with a 1/100-scale and bearing a red “100” at 12 o’clock — and offers an unobstructed view of Montblanc Caliber MB M66.25. Among the details on display are the column wheel near 12 o’clock, which advances by one increment each time the chronograph pusher is triggered, and the components of the bidirectional winding mechanism at 3 o’clock.

The current time is displayed on an anthracite-gray hour scale framed in silver, which is interrupted by two sapphire subdials, one at at 9 o’clock for the running seconds and the other at 6 o’clock for the chronograph’s 60 elapsed seconds and 15 elapsed minutes. The “lanceolate” hour and minute hands are inlaid with Super-LumiNova. The large, central chrono counter hand, which is made of lightweight aluminum and coated with red lacquer, completes one rotation per second. The chronograph subdial has two concentric scales, each swept by its own hand: the longer black hand counts 60 elapsed seconds on the outer scale, which is marked with Arabic numerals, while the shorter red hand counts 15 elapsed minutes on the inner scale.

Harking back to classical Minerva movements of yesteryear, this one also boasts numerous hand-decorated finishes, which the watch’s owner can admire through the sapphire caseback window. Plates, bridges and steel parts are manually fabricated and decorated with circular graining and/or Geneva waves. Edges are manually bevelled, bevels are hand-polished and flanks are brush-finished. Each balance spring is individually hand-counted. The functional surfaces of the chronograph rockers and levers are abraded to match each other with tolerances in the 1/100th-millimeter range, and the ruby pallet-stones are finely adjusted. One can also watch the oscillations of both balances.

The Montblanc discount fake watches for men Timewalker Chronograph 100 is a limited edition of 100 pieces, priced at $63,900.

Counter Sync: Reviewing the Citizen Proximity

Citizen’s new Proximity is the discount fake watches uk first analog watch with Bluetooth. We put it to the test in this feature from the WatchTime archives. Does it sink, or sync? (Photos by Robert Atkinson).

These days, you can hardly fire up your Web browser without landing on an article about the Apple Watch and a host of other wrist-borne devices that sync with smart phones. One recent headline proclaimed that technology companies have discovered that the wrist is valuable real estate. Readers of this magazine have known that for some time. Yet for all the hype, micro-computers with straps remain the nerds of the watch world: they’re highly intelligent, but often ticketed by the fashion police. Not to mention that only babies and capuchin monkeys have fingers small enough to manipulate their screens.proximity_01c

Sync seekers who prefer old-school watches with hands have limited options – very limited. In fact, as this is written, Citizen’s new Proximity is the sole choice.

How does the Proximity work? In a nutshell, it uses low energy Bluetooth 4.0 to sync with the iPhone 4S and 5 (sorry, Android fans). The link allows the watch to provide alerts about new e-mails, calls, and scheduled events. It can also help you find your lost phone. It’s not compatible with earlier iPhones, because they do not offer Bluetooth 4.0, which first became available in the iPhone 4S in October 2011.

Out of the box, the Proximity makes a good impression. It’s available in two color schemes: a traditional silver-colored stainless-steel case with blue accents, and a stealthy black ion finish with Incredible Hulk green accents. My test watch was the Hulk variety.

The Proximity’s case officially measures 45 mm in diameter, but like many watches with oversize crowns and pushers, it’s much wider than that, so it wears larger than its published dimensions would indicate. It’s 14.5 mm thick and it weighs 105 grams, and it has a solid feel. Thanks to the slightly curved lugs, the watch fit my 7¾-inch wrist comfortably, and it fit under dress-shirt cuffs with no problem.

The 22-mm strap is leather sandwiched between a brightly colored nylon lining and a pseudo-suede polyurethane outer discount watches replica aaa layer. Hulk-green stitching and rows of small perforations give the strap a decidedly sporty look.

The crystal is mineral glass with anti-reflective coating on the inside. Beneath it, the dial provides a great deal of information, but like many multi-function watches, it’s not a paradigm of legibility.

The dial contains three primary indicators. The “control panel” is located at 6 o’clock. This subdial tells you which mode the watch is in. Three of the modes are Bluetooth-related:

  • “PR” is pair mode, used to establish the initial connection between the watch and the phone.
  • “CT” is connect, to reestablish the watch-phone link after the initial pairing.
  • “DCT” disconnects the watch from the phone.

The remaining modes are for more traditional functions. “TME,” “CAL” and “CHR” are time mode, calendar, and chronograph. “LTM” is local time mode, and “0” resets the watch hands should any of them cease to point where they’re supposed to.

Setting up the Proximity is a breeze, thanks to four short videos included on the credit-card-size USB drive that comes with the watch. The videos cover the Proximity app, which you can download from iTunes; pairing the watch and the phone; initial set-up; and choosing your notification preferences in the app. Each video is just a few minutes long.

The USB card also contains the 12-page owner’s manual. Although 12 pages doesn’t sound like much, this small package contains about a week’s worth of homework. I printed mine out and went through it like a college textbook, with yellow highlighter and red pen in buy luxury fake watches hand.  With this watch, it definitely helps to read the manual.

Out of This World: Reviewing the Seiko Astron GPS Watch

The Seiko Astron, released to great discount fake watches online fanfare in 2012, tells time by receiving GPS signals anywhere on Earth. Was it a world-beater in our test? Click here to read our in-depth review of the Seiko Astron GPS solar watch, with original photographs by Robert Atkinson.

The last time Seiko called a new watch “Astron,” the future of timekeeping changed forever. Launched on Christmas Day, 1969, the original Seiko Astron watch was the world’s first commercially available quartz wristwatch. At the time, Seiko said of the Astron, “Someday, all watches will be made this way.” Today, it’s saying the same thing about the new Astron. Is Seiko right? Let’s find out. If you have not read about it, the new Astron is an analog, solar-powered watch that receives GPS satellite signals and adjusts to the precise local time anywhere on Earth. It recognizes all 39 time zones, besting the top mechanical watches, which can display 37, with a manual reset. The Astron covers the globe by first determining its location using GPS, then comparing that information with an onboard database that divides the Earth’s surface into one million squares, each of which is assigned to a particular time zone. That is something no other watch can do.

The Seiko Astron differs from watches that receive terrestrial radio signals from atomic clocks. So-called RC (radio-controlled) watches receive signals when they are within range of stations in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and China, so they do not offer global coverage. The Astron works anywhere, even in the middle of an ocean or desert, in Antarctica, or on a Tibetan mountaintop. Seiko Astron watches also automatically recognizes which time zone they are in, while RC watches do not.

The Astron also differs from Citizen’s limited-edition Satellite Wave, which receives GPS signals, but lacks a GPS geo-location function so it does not change time zones automatically. Finally, though the Astron is a GPS receiver that knows precisely where it is, it can’t direct you to that new restaurant downtown, or tell you how far it is to the 14th green. It uses GPS solely to tell time.

When you take an Astron out of the box, it may have to be charged. The Astron is powered by light – any type of light will charge its battery, but sunlight is the most efficient energizer. The charging status is displayed via an “E – F” (Empty – Full) indicator between 9 and 10 o’clock. The power reserve when fully charged is two months in active mode and six months in sleep mode. In sleep mode, the Astron does not display the time until it “wakes up” discount watches replica y being exposed to light.  It takes only six minutes of sunlight to provide enough power for the Astron to run for one day, but going from empty to fully charged requires 65 hours of sunlight. The GPS receiver will not operate when the watch is low on power, so regular charging is important. The Seiko Astron performs two basic types of operations with GPS signals: it can automatically and manually sync to a single satellite to make sure its local time display is accurate, and it can be manually triggered to change time zones, which requires at least four satellite signals.Seiko Astron front view

The Astron automatically attempts to sync with a single GPS signal once each day. The sync can be set in motion by exposure to the sun or another strong source of light. The Astron’s programming tells it that if a strong light source is present, there’s a good chance it can receive a signal. If the Astron acquires a signal, it remembers when that happened. On subsequent days, if the watch is covered by clothing or otherwise blocked from light, it searches for the signal at the same time as the last successful attempt, assuming the chances for reception are good. To make sure it’s always on time, the Astron can also receive leap-second data. Leap seconds are added about every luxury fake watches online store 18 months to account for the Earth’s slowing rotation. The most recent was added on June 30, 2012.