2013/05/06
TAG Heuer The Carrera MikroPendulum & MikroPendulumS
Beyond the Tourbillon…
Pioneering avant-garde requires imagination boldly expressed. Micro-blades instead of hairsprings. Belts instead of gears. Magnets instead of hairsprings. Never because it is new, always because it is better. Faster, more precise, more reliable, more beautiful. The quest for simplicity, not complexity...
100th-of-a-Second Concept Chronograph
AVANT-GARDE HAUTE HORLOGERIE, the award-winning TAG Heuer atelier behind some of the 21st-century watchmaking’s biggest breakthroughs, delivers a double slam this Baselworld by commercializing the first-ever magnet-driven 100th-of-a-second chronograph & conceptualizing the first-ever double magnetic tourbillon.
Over the last decade, TAG Heuer’s Avant-Garde Haute Horlogerie workshop--an 25-person team of scientists, engineers and designers--has pulled off some of the most revolutionary coups in watchmaking history. The core of that achievement is its high-precision MIKRO Series, a platform of powerful technological innovations that turn many of horology’s centuries-old hypotheses about how watches must work on their head.
Among the atelier’s most recent breakthroughs:
The TAG Heuer Carrera Mikrograph (2011): the first integrated column wheel mechanical 1/100th of a second wrist chronograph with flying central hand display.
The TAG Heuer Carrera Mikrotimer Flying 1000 (2011): a new in-house concept watch capable of 1/1000th accuracy.
The TAG Heuer Carrera Mikrogirder (2012): winner of the Aiguille d’Or, watchmaking’s most prestigious award, the only chronograph precise to 5/10,000th second, equipped with a never-before-seen regulating system made of micro blades that beats at an incredible 1,000 hertz
The TAG Heuer Carrera MikrotourbillonS (2012): a dual-chained, dual-frequency, double-barreled and double-tourbillon chronograph--the fastest, most accurate tourbillon ever made.
This year’s TAG Heuer Baselworld breakthroughs are based on another one-of-a-kind innovation from the grand masters: the Carrera Pendulum (2010), the world’s first escapement to work with magnets instead of a traditional hairspring.
This revolutionary COSC-certified regulator overturns 3 centuries of conventional watchmaking tradition. In a classical spiral hairspring system (invented by Christian Huygens in 1675), the effect of gravity due to mass is a dominant issue. With the Pendulum, the problem no longer even exists--there is no loss of amplitude. The result is a significant increase in precision (division of time) and performance (frequency accuracy and stability).
Still, the original TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept posed problems that many thought insurmountable. In particular, thermal sensibility: magnetic fields are influenced by temperature differences, which affect performance. Over the last 3 years, however, TAG Heuer’s scientists and engineers have worked on this problem, experimenting with new magnetic atoms, metal alloys and carefully dimensioned and machined geometries. The result is a new overturning of conventional wisdom: an invisible, magnet-driven spiral that moves the balance wheel at a low amplitude and high frequency that ensure a perfect accuracy and stability. Overall, the magnetic oscillator’s performance comes close to matching traditional hairsprings of the highest quality. Even better--it is much easier to manufacture and impervious to shock, gravity and geometric deformations.
For the time being, this technology is only commercially applicable for frequencies higher than 10 Hz. Fortunately, this is TAG Heuer’s uncontested domain: the brand has completely dominated the world of ultra-precision for years.
To showcase this advancement, TAG Heuer is presenting a double launch of the new chronograph technology at Baselworld: one commercially available, the other in the concept stage. Backed by many TAG Heuer patents, both are delivered in the motor-sports inspired chassis of the brand’s iconic Carrera collection.
