The RICHARD MILLE with the “average price of one million” finally has a “self-produced movement” Everyone knows that RICHARD MILLE is the most expensive watch on the market, with an average price of more than one million. But what many people may not know is that RICHARD MILLE, which has an average price of more than one million, uses a movement that is not a self-produced movement.
RICHARD MILLE is the first watch to use a self-produced chronograph movement, the RM72-01 chronograph, available in rose gold and titanium cases.
The vast majority of RICHARD MILLE watches use movements from the Vaucher movement factory (in the early days, some came from APRP, the movement factory under Audemars Piguet). The Vaucher movement factory and Parmigiani Fleurier are the same, both belong to the Santos Family Foundation. Therefore, the movements of many RICHARD MILLE watches are the same as the movements of Parmigiani Fleurier watches, because they are all provided by the Vaucher movement factory. The difference is that RICHARD MILLE will further modify and hollow out the movement.
We can see a four-pointed star pattern like a “dart” in the relatively hidden position of the RICHARD MILLE movement splint, which is the logo of the Vaucher movement factory.
RICHARD MILLE RM11, the four-pointed star in the yellow circle, is the logo of the Vaucher movement factory, indicating that this movement comes from the Vaucher movement factory.
Last year (2020), RICHARD MILLE launched the first self-produced chronograph movement, the CRMC1 chronograph movement, which is a self-winding, integrated, cylindrical wheel, flyback chronograph movement. Used on RICHARD MILLE’s new RM72-01 chronograph.
RICHARD MILLE is the first watch to use the self-produced chronograph movement, the RM72-01 chronograph rose gold model.
Some players here might say that the very popular RM11 is also a chronograph, isn’t that a self-produced movement? Yes, RM11 is not self-produced, it is a movement provided by the Vaucher movement factory. RICHARD MILLE’s first self-produced movement, CRMC1, is an automatic chronograph movement with a very different design. Although the official price of RM72-01 is more than 1.87 million, which is relatively remote for most players, I still want to focus on it today as a popular science.
RICHARD MILLE swiss is the first watch to use the self-produced chronograph movement, the RM72-01 chronograph titanium case version.
The chronograph movement used in famous watches generally uses the following two movement structures:
- Horizontal clutch chronograph movement. Advantages: The movement structure is classical and beautiful. Like Patek Philippe 5170/5172, Vacheron Constantin’s horn chronograph, Zenith EL PRIMERO chronograph, the movement uses a horizontal clutch structure.
- Vertical clutch chronograph movement. Advantages: Outstanding performance, solves the problem of the jitter of the second hand at the start of the timer. Like Rolex Daytona, Omega Speedmaster 9300/9900, Blancpain 50 Fathom chronographs, the movements all use a vertical clutch structure.
It is amazing that RICHARD MILLE RM72-01 neither uses a horizontal clutch nor a vertical clutch. Instead, it uses the “swing gear” clutch that is not very common in the self-produced chronograph movement.
What is a swing gear?
The swing gear is this “little thing”, a small column with teeth on top and bottom. The densely toothed end is connected to the timing part, and the sparsely toothed end is connected to the time travel part. Through engagement/disengagement, the start and stop of the timing are controlled. The swing gear clutch was invented by TAG Heuer in 1887. Among modern chronograph movements, the ETA7750 is the representative of the large-scale use of swing gear clutch.
As mentioned earlier, the outstanding advantage of the horizontal clutch is beautiful, and the outstanding advantage of the vertical clutch is performance. The swing gear is more modest and has no outstanding advantages. Therefore, it is rarely used in the self-produced chronograph movements of major famous watches. But RICHARD MILLE found that the swing gear is just the most suitable for him.
Why did RICHARD MILLE choose the swing gear?
When the RM72-01 chronograph was first released, I saw that the CRMC1 chronograph movement of the RM72-01 used a swing gear clutch. I was very surprised. I didn’t understand why RICHARD MILLE chose this rare structure. RICHARD MILLE specifically explained why the oscillating gear clutch was selected.
RICHARD MILLE believes that the horizontal clutch structure, due to the need to drive a large clutch gear, will cause a large loss of power to the mainspring and reduce the torque of the mainspring. After the chronograph is started, it will have a greater impact on the time of the watch, so it is not suitable for RICHARD MILLE; the vertical clutch structure, due to the structure of the upper and lower friction plates, although the performance is outstanding, the structure of the vertical clutch is not beautiful enough and has a certain shade to the movement. Not in line with RICHARD MILLE’s pursuit of coolness (The chronograph movement provided by the Vaucher movement factory to RICHARD MILLE is actually a vertical clutch, but because it is self-produced this time, RICHARD MILLE’s requirements for itself have increased, and it can’t be “combined.” ).
The reason why cheap RICHARD MILLE chooses the swing gear is:
- The structure of the oscillating gear is simple, the efficiency of power transmission is relatively high, the torque loss of the clockwork is small, and the impact on the time of the watch is relatively small.
- The simple structure of the oscillating gear takes up less space, which is beneficial to RICHARD MILLE to control the size of the movement, preventing the watch from being made too large and thick, and at the same time, it can expose more mechanical structure of the movement without obstructing the movement, which is conducive to beautiful appearance.
From the structure diagram of the CRMC1 chronograph movement of RM72-01, we can see that the CRMC1 chronograph movement uses two swing gears. One is responsible for the clutching and disengagement of the time-lapse seconds wheel and the chronograph second wheel, and the other is responsible for the clutching and disengagement of the chronograph second wheel and the chronograph minute wheel. This design is very rare in chronograph movements, because a general chronograph movement only uses one swing gear (the minute wheel does not have a general movement).
At the same time, in order to lower the CRMC1 chronograph movement, the clockwork second wheel → the chronograph second wheel → the chronograph minute wheel → the chronograph hour wheel. In this set of power transmission, the torque of the mainspring is reduced to keep the running time stable, and the clockwork of the CRMC1 chronograph movement is also Through gears, it is connected to the chronograph minute wheel and the chronograph hour wheel to provide power for them (in other words, a barrel has three transmission gear trains). Therefore, even if the timing is started, it will not affect the normal time of the watch. This is where the CRMC1 chronograph movement surpasses other general chronograph movements.
The final application of these technologies is this best RICHARD MILLE RM72-01. The layout of the RM72-01 is very unique, with a small second at 9 o’clock, a minute counter at 1 o’clock, and an hour counter at 5 o’clock, which are different from ordinary chronographs. The watch movement has a transparent back, making it very complicated and cool. At the same time, the thickness of the watch has dropped drastically to only 11.68 mm (the Rolex Water Ghost is 13 mm thick). The thickness of the RM11-03 that uses the movement purchased from the Vaucher movement factory is 16.15 mm. RM72-01 perfectly combines technology, coolness and thickness to achieve a balance.
RM72-01 not only represents the highest technical level of RICHARD MILLE chronographs, but also one of the highest levels of chronographs in today’s famous watches.