Richard Mille RM 27-01 Tourbillon Raphael Nadal

When people refer to a "hanging tourbillon", they usually think of an escapement without any upper bridges. Not so for Richard Mille: here, the entire tourbillon movement is literally suspended within the case. This extraordinary timepiece was created for the equally extraordinary champion Rafael Nadal. replica watches for men

turn off volume turn off ads It all started in 2010. Richard Mille (man) came to chat with Rafael Nadal about Richard Mille (brand). Convincing the tennis star to become a partner has proved difficult; Rafael Nadal simply doesn't like wearing any accessories on the court, be it bracelets, chains or rings. He's a perfectionist and goes all out when he plays, following a ritual he masters from start to finish. However, Richard Mille wasn't put off and promised him a watch he wouldn't even feel. The rest, as they say, is history.

19 grams, including strap Many of the RMs that followed have featured this ultra-lightness, a feat by which the watchmaker became a master of the past. The RM 27-01 is no exception. In 2013, the watch was able to withstand accelerations of up to 5,000 grams and was powered by a titanium and aluminum-lithium movement with a combined weight of just 3.5 grams. The entire timepiece, including the strap, weighs less than 19 grams. This double achievement in weight and strength is enough to make the RM 27-01 a legendary timepiece. But it's also worth knowing how it's assembled to see how its tourbillon movement at 6 o'clock achieves such a record. In fact, this time, the secret of this RM lies not only in the way the movement is made,copy luxury watches

Stopping the vibration wave The original observation was self-evident: the vibrational wave propagated outward. For Rafael Nadal, the waves emanate from the strings of his racket and travel to his wrist and then to the watch. It is also intuitively obvious that the tighter the watch is on the wrist, the larger the contact surface between the two, and the more the wave will propagate. Like all athletes, "Rafa" likes that the watch fits perfectly on his wrist without any unnecessary movement that could be detrimental to his shots. In other words, every time Nadal hits the ball, nearly all the vibrational energy from the racket is transferred to his watch. Since Nadal wouldn't have imagined any gap between his watch and his wrist, Richard Mille had a wild idea: Instead,

paused movement The idea is achieved by pausing the motion on the cable. The RM 27-01 Rafael Nadal has a plate connected to the case by four braided steel cables with an overall diameter of 0.35mm. This rigid yet flexible structure protects movement from various impacts. The cables are kept taut using a tensioner system located at the four corners of the movement (at the 3 and 9 o'clock positions) and pulleys (acting as hangers). Attached to the tensioner, each cable passes through the upper pulley, through the movement and back to the lower pulley, and finally to the inner flange. Once the cable is in place, the watchmaker uses a special tool to tighten the cable by rotating the central tensioner ring. Cable installation and tensioning are extremely delicate operations. Excessive tension can cause cables and connections to break, disrupting movement. On the other hand, insufficient tension can cause the movement to start resonating, disrupting its timing. However, if adjusted properly, this extraordinary movement suspended in the case can withstand accelerations of over 5,000 grams.swiss watch replicas

Richard Miller

RM012

The idea of ​​making the tourbillon movement more powerful by making it lighter doesn't seem to make much sense. Richard Mille has proven it can, with its movement featuring an innovative structure consisting of tubes instead of baseplates.

Turn off volume Turn off ADS Most of the components involved in the construction of the movement have evolved to some extent, but the bottom plate seems to have remained the same over the centuries. Since the invention of the Lépine movement, the bridges of each organ have been mounted on the bottom plate and the top plate is no longer required. But the complete disappearance of the lower dial is an extremely rare development that has only recently emerged, often associated with skeleton watches in the 21st century. The RM 012 tourbillon opens up a new way of not using it. Richard Mille's starting point was a simple question: Given that the purpose of the baseplate is to keep the movement together, are there other ways to achieve the same goal? The watchmaker found: the tube.copy watches for sale

lighter and stronger Granted, Richard Mille pays little attention to accepted watchmaking wisdom, such as the belief that the tourbillon is fragile, or that a light watch is not as strong as a heavy watch. More specifically, a watch without a baseplate would be weaker in this case. The idea of ​​the RM 012 is to have the shock, stress and strain normally absorbed by the base plate replaced by a tubular structure. Basically, it's as if the bottom plate only includes its outer edge, its perimeter. The result is not a complete solid sheet of metal, but an open-frame construction made up of tubes woven through the movement.

From an aesthetic and technical standpoint, it's an exploit. The RM 012 takes hollowing out to the extreme. The tourbillon at 6 o'clock is suspended from a tubular X. Each wheel and each organ is attached to the intersection of two to four tubes. Assembling the movement is a game of pick-up stick rather than traditional watchmaking; this stage alone takes months of work.

Tubes and trophies RM 012 itself is the result of two years of development. Based on a design inspired by structural forms in architecture, the angular layout of the RM 012 and its Phynox tubes provides optimum strength and stiffness to prevent twisting, as well as excellent resistance to temperature changes and sources of corrosion. It has also received well-deserved recognition from industry professionals. Introduced in 2006, the RM 012's revolutionary concept earned Richard Mille the "Golden Needle" award at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève as well as the Asian edition.replica luxury watch