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#Mechanical watch timing app tickpoint tutorial free

In his video description, Christian at the Watch Guy points out that his Timegrapher and Witschi give identical readings. The modern timing machines have pretty displays and neat functions, but underneath they are merely doing what the Watchmaster machines and Greiner Vibrograf machines from the 1940s and 1950s did. It’s important to step back and realize that a timing machine isn’t performing rocket surgery: it is detecting sounds, measuring intervals between them, and doing some simple math. The expensive options are a poor value for the hobbyist and collector.

#Mechanical watch timing app tickpoint tutorial free

Like everything else, timing machines span the price range from startling to free, from the high-end Witschi machines found in commercial shops to the humble Made-in-China Timegrapher to free open-source software. We’ll see many of these throughout this blog and describe them as they come up. Many problems-from rubbing hairsprings to knocking to problems in the gear train-reveal themselves in particular patterns of timing traces. When a watch runs well, it leaves two clean, parallel traces as it ticks merrily along. Without a timing machine, this is tedious and complicated. And we also need to read the rates at low amplitudes so we can find poise errors. We’ve talked about how we need an amplitude of at least 270 degrees in the horizontal positions and 220 degrees in the vertical positions.

The watch’s amplitude, a crucial factor in watch adjusting.

Based on that, we can estimate the watch’s daily rate-how slow or fast it would be across 24 hours.

The watch’s instantaneous rate-how fast or slow it is within a small window of time (e.g., 2, 4, 10, or 30 seconds) right now.

Timing machines show us three things that we really need to know to make a watch run accurately: Books from the 1940s and 1950s describe them as a genuine marvel, and they were-they allowed watchmakers to diagnose faults and to shave days off the time needed for positional timing. The invention of timing machines was a huge leap for adjusting. (I doubt I could be trusted around so many 16-size Bunn Specials…) In his great book on Illinois wrist watches, Fredric Friedberg mentions the factory’s “timing room,” where workers kept “hundreds of watches wound while they were being tested for accuracy” (p. Adjusting a watch to 6 positions was a drawn-out affair.Ī big factory would have a lot of watches sitting around, ticking merrily until the next visit to the adjuster. If necessary, the watch was adjusted again, wound, and left to sit for another day. The next day, the rate was noted, allowing a calculation of how slow or fast the watch ran in that position. After an adjustment, the watch was set to a standard time (or its deviation was noted) and then left in a position for a day.

In the old days, watch adjusting could take weeks. If you don’t have a timing machine, you really need one. Collectors of vintage watches tend to be fans of the old days and the old ways, but we’ll always take time-saving inventions when we can find them.