Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/08/10/czapek-place-vendome-complicite-a-different-take-on-a-differential/
Around and round, I go,
One side fast and one side slow,
Always in a hurry,
Always a bit behind,
Never knew that I was
Key to telling time.
I’m twisted to the left
While I’m torqued to the right,
All while my insides
Are packaged up real tight.
It turns out I have talent
For being in the middle,
Been told I got great balance
With inputs off a little.
It isn’t all that hard,
I do it without a thought,
All because of two great minds,
Out of metal they did wrought.
I ain’t no locomotive,
Even though I am a train,
I’m no solar system,
Yet have planets in my brain.
I really am just different,
Like your brother or your sister,
Call me Differential,
But no first name, please, just Mister.
Ahh, it’s good to be back! And why not start right up with a fun little ditty about one of the coolest forms of gear systems that seem easy to grasp but very difficult to build, Mr. Differential! That sounds like a fun character to be found on a T-shirt, maybe today’s focal brand would want to collaborate on a design for some swag? I have some ideas!
All kidding aside, the differential is a very specific system that can serve a variety of purposes, but in a watch with two separate going trains it seeks to average out two inputs into one single output. That output is the mechanical average of the speed of the inputs (two gear trains regulated by two slightly different escapements) and thus should remain more consistent even if the underlying gear trains changed pace.
It’s a difficult system to create not only because many crucial components are very tiny, but because to have it operate exactly as intended takes a fair bit of math and meticulous design.
If you then put additional tight constraints on that design, the difficulty goes up almost exponentially. Of course, that is what brings us to Czapek and Bernhard Lederer, the brilliant minds behind the stunningly symmetrical Place Vendôme Complicité, a dual gear train masterwork that debuted at Geneva Watch Days 2023.
Czapek Place Vendôme Complicité
What is this watch, at its core? If you don’t get lost in the dial side mechanics (though if you don’t you probably aren’t reading this), the Place Vendôme Complicité is a “simple” round watch that displays the hours, minutes, and seconds with a small power reserve indicator at six o’clock.
It’s manually wound with 3 days of power reserve, and slightly large at just under 42 millimeters in diameter. With all of that said, we still have no idea what this watch is, and like an iceberg, the best is all just below the surface.
Built on a new movement, the Calibre 8, the Place Vendôme Complicité uses twin mainsprings joined in a series to power twin gear trains joined by a central differential. This results in dial side twin balance wheels that are seen at 4:30 and 7:30 and twin escapements flanking them respectively near three o’clock and nine o’clock.
Moving upward on the dial we find mirrored fourth wheels that meet the differential in the center at twelve o’clock.
This perfectly symmetrical layout is highlighted underneath two large, layered sapphire bridges that support everything from the escape wheel to the differential. The two balance wheels are supported by more typical skeletonized steel bridges, in the same vein as the previous Place Vendôme pieces.
That layout, while remaining familiar to the collection, is where the headache for the development of these pieces began because the well-known real estate mantra holds true here: location, location, location.
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Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/08/10/czapek-place-vendome-complicite-a-different-take-on-a-differential/