Frederique Constant Slimline Monolithic Manufacture
The Frederique Constant Slimline Monolithic Manufacture casts aside the tried and trusted Swiss lever escapement in favour of a new single piece silicon oscillator. Mark McArthur-Christie examines this innovative technology in detail.
Watchmaking is a constant struggle against gravity, friction and magnetism. Find a solution to that unholy trinity of problems and you have a watch that will run for the rest of time, given a wind or two every now and then.
God the Father, in this particular trinity, is friction. When watch components move, no matter how well-oiled, there is friction. Friction means power loss, inaccuracy and, arguably the biggest problem of all, the need for lubricant.
John Harrison, who was as much a materials scientist as he was a chronometer maker, recognised this in the early eighteenth century. Often mocked as a bumpkin who made clocks from wood because he knew no better, Harrison was actually a genius. He recognised that certain woods were self-lubricating. No oils to evaporate, no oils to gather dust and turn into grinding paste within a movement. Breguet too realised the issues with friction and lubrication, exclaiming to his patron Louis XVI, “Find me the perfect oil, Majesty, and I will make you the perfect watch!”
So what happens if you build a watch escapement that eliminates friction, the effect of magnetism and gravity? You get Frederique Constant’s new cal. FC810. With the cal. FC810, the Geneva-based watchmaker appears to have come as close to Harrison and Breguet’s frictionless dream as anyone so far.
A traditional watch movement will have around 130 parts, nearly 30 of them in the escapement. It’s a thing of great beauty; components meshing and parting, spinning and moving. But, from an engineering point of view, that’s one big friction headache. Frederique Constant, working with Flexous, the Dutch flexible technology specialist, has found a way to reduce those nearly 30 components with all their wear, tolerance and lubrication problems to, er, one.
It’s almost possible to imagine Breguet and Harrison sitting on high, raising their glasses and asking, ‘Now why the heck didn’t we think of that?’ The answer has nothing to do with either of history’s greatest watchmakers having a lack of brainpower. It’s down to technology and Harrison’s favourite, materials science.
Where Breguet and Harrison did things with thin sheets of brass that still almost defy physics, Frederique Constant and Flexous have gone a step further and used silicon. Where Breguet, Harrison and all who came after them have used a spinning metal balance, pallets and a spring, the cal. FC810 rationalises them into a single-layer, single piece silicon oscillator. The hairspring, the balance, the pallets, pallet stones and shock absorption system are all packing their desks into cardboard boxes and queuing outside the local job centre.
Because the oscillator is cut from one, single sheet of silicon around 300μ thin, it has no moving parts – at least, not in any conventional sense. No moving parts means no friction. And no friction means no need for lubricant, that constant watchmaking bugbear. The oscillator moves, but only does so within itself. It’s hard to understate the importance of this to longevity, maintenance and accuracy. It also removes the need for an external and complicated shock-absorbing system. The oscillator is almost impervious to shocks. In short, the Flexous oscillator takes the conventional system and completely does away with nearly all its weaknesses.
So far, so very clever – but what does it mean for the watch using this new calibre? Start by taking a look at the second hand. Where a conventional second hand moves in tiny but visible steps, the new silicon system means the cal. FC810’s sweeps seamlessly around the dial making an invisible-to-the-naked-eye 80 ‘ticks’ per second. The movement is reminiscent of a 1960s Bulova Accutron but without the hum. That’s because the new oscillator doesn’t so much spin as shimmer. A conventional balance has an amplitude of around 300° when fully-wound – the Flexous oscillator moves by just 6°. That’s because, rather than having a balance controlled by a hairspring, the whole thing is an integral compliant mechanism; it elastically deforms as a single unit around four, straight, integral flexors. And being silicon, there’s no fatigue from the constant deforming/reforming cycles so no need to replace the oscillator as a service item.
This, in turn, means that the Flexous system beats ten times faster (near enough) than a standard balance-and-spring setup too; 288,000Hz rather than 28,000Hz. This is brilliantly clever, but it also gave Frederique Constant’s team a headache. They had to develop a high speed camera, controlled by a laser, in order to regulate the ‘balance’.
Those tiny lines on the face of the unit are regulating lines so you can angle the two adjusting weights correctly; inwards makes the movement run faster, outwards it’ll beat slower. And you’re adjusting to 1/100th of a second tolerances too, not the more usual 1/10s. That gives the movement scope to be far more accurate.
The speed of the ‘balance’ meant Frederique Constant had to re-engineer the going train of the Slimline Monolithic Manufacture to cope. In essence, they’ve produced a movement designed around the new oscillator with an extra gear.
You might think that a balance beating that rapidly would eat power and need a mainspring the size of a dinner plate. Not so. Because of the fractional weight of the new system and its far greater efficiency, a standard mainspring will happily power the watch for 80 hours.
They could have designed a watch case that would be happy on Judge Dredd’s wrist to match this hi-tech new movement but Frederique Constant has kept things trad. Rather than printing a carbon fibre case or cutting one from black anodised aerospace titanium, you can have a perfectly normal, elegant looking one in either stainless steel or 18ct gold. There are 810 stainless steel models but just 81 in gold.
Turn the watch over and there’s an exhibition caseback so you can admire the cal. FC810’s Geneva stripes and perlage along with the openworked oscillating weight providing the power. So far, so standard. But sitting right where you’d expect a tourbillon cage to be showing itself off, at six on the dial, is the silicon oscillator. This is the first time a silicon oscillator the size of a traditional balance wheel has been used in a production watch.
The dial itself features Roman numerals and guilloché and could barely be more restrained. You have a choice of silver (FC-810MC3S6) or a deep blue (FC-810MCN3S6). Breguet hour and minute hands, a central sweep seconds and a pointer-date at 12 complete the picture. The contrast between modern technology and traditional watchmaking is marked indeed, but Frederique Constant has integrated the two so well that you can’t see the join.
Then there’s the price. It would be natural to expect the sort of number you’d see on the servicing bill for a Space Shuttle, but not so. The 81 gold watches are €14,495 but the stainless steel models are comfortably under €5,000, priced at €4,495. For a piece of watchmaking history, that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
There’s a rather pleasing arc to the cal. FC810’s story. The balance spring – one of the 26 components the new silicon oscillator replaces – was invented by Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens in 1675. Huygens was born in The Hague, just a 40 minute bike ride from the YES!Delft building on Molengraaffsingel where Flexous has its offices. He’d doubtless have been fascinated by their new invention.
It’s anyone’s guess where it will go from here. As we’ve seen, it has many, many advantages over the traditional balance-and-spring approach that’s served watchmaking well since Huygens. It eliminates, with simplicity and efficiency, so many of the problems that have bedevilled watchmakers for centuries. Under any objective measure, it is a better system. So will a shimmering sliver of silicon eventually come to replace the spring and balance?
In reality, probably not. The watchworld is – thankfully – not a rational place, or we’d all be wearing resin F-91W Casios. Quartz is already, in any objective sense, ‘better’ than mech but one sees very few top-end movements with a battery under the caseback. That’s because it’s not a question of what’s more or less efficient.
Collectors and enthusiasts love the accessible intricacy of the balance wheel, hairspring and pallet system. They admire the craftsmanship needed to design, assemble and maintain it. To be perhaps a little poetic, we find resonance in the fragile, imperfect heartbeat of a watch.
The cal. FC810 instead shows us what’s possible and how materials science and watchmaking can work together. And that’s what makes it remarkable.
Images – Copyright © Eric Rossier
Further reading
https://frederiqueconstant.com/
Technical specifications
- Model: Frederique Constant Slimline Monolithic Manufacture
- Reference: FC-810MC3S6 (steel case, silver dial); FC-810MCN3S6 (steel case, blue dial); FC-810MC3S9 (18ct case, silver dial)
- Case: Steel or 18ct rose gold; diameter 40mm; water resistance 3ATM (30 metres); sapphire crystal to front; exhibition caseback.
- Functions: Hours; minutes; centre seconds; pointer date
- Movement: FC-810 Manufacture calibre; automatic movement; frequency 288,000 vph (40Hz); 19 jewels; power reserve 80 hours.
- Strap: Coordinating alligator strap with steel folding clasp
- Price: €4,495 – FC-810MC3S6 (RRP as at 8.5.2021)
- Price: €4,495 – FC-810MCN3S6 (RRP as at 8.5.2021)
- Price: €14,995 – FC-810MC3S9 (RRP as at 8.5.2021)