How A Spring Drive Watch Works

Posted by Simon P Jennings

February 7, 2010

The SEIKO spring Drive watch succeeded the quartz Astron in 1969. It uses the mechanical watch technology for its operability. Although it has a mainspring, nevertheless, it also has a system that has newly been designed for the purpose of time regulation. Due to this system, the Spring Drive shows time that is accurate up to one second per day. There is also the feature of glide motion in the watch that ensures continuous and even motion.

The Spring Drive is a watch that was developed by Seiko Epson through teamwork with Seiko Instruments. It uses a mainspring, automatic winder, barrel and stem winding to store the watch energy.

At Suva Seikosha, Yoshikazu Akahane was the first individual to imagine the design of the Spring Drive watch. This happened in 1977. The patent for the watch was applied for in 1982, and the introduction of the watch for the very first time took place in 1998 at the Basel Watch Fair. Later on, in 2005, there was another introduction held at the Basel Watch Fair for the version of the watch that had an automatic winder. The launch of the model was done in Paris in September the same year.

The traditional escapement is replaced with a device that Seiko calls a Tri-synchro Regulator. This device adjusts the unwinding of the mainspring. The regulator controls the use of the three forms of energies consumed in the Spring Drive mechanism, the first mechanical power of the mainspring, the electrical energy, which is generated from mechanical power, and energy from electromagnetic, which governs the rotation of the glide wheel.

The energy generated from electromagnetic is responsible for controlling the rotation of the glide wheel. The wheel rotates eight times per second. The frequency of the glide wheel is constantly adjusted using a variable braking force. All this regulation and rotation makes the system of the watch a very mechanical one.

With the use of the Tri-synchro, there is no tickling of the watch, which used to be the case in the watches that used the traditional escapement. Hence, with this technology, the movement of the watch does not stop, like it does in the traditional watch that uses escapement.

The innovative movement system is not only being used in the Spring Drive watch, but is also being used in other international collections by SEIKO such as the IZUL, CREDOR, PROSPEX and GALANTE. These watches are a little more towards the high end because of their high prices. There are, however, some problems related to chronograph, moon phases and calendar functions.

With the Spring Drive Watch, there is double power reserve available, which lasts for about seventy-two hours. This performance is much better than that of the tradition system, which offers only forty hours. In addition, the winding mechanism in the Spring Drive watch is very fast. Instead of decreasing accuracy, as is commonly the case with mechanical watches, the Spring Drive watch offers added accuracy accompanied by smoothness.

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