By recruiting to the Tec Group watchmakers Eric Coudray and Paul Clémenti, two Gaïa prizes, the ardent Arnaud Faivre has brought HYT’s fluids into his workshops. The 41-jewel Caliber 601-MO came out. Backstage tour appeared in the Swiss watchmaking journal JSH.
By Lee Warrien, TàG Press +41 contributor for Swiss Watch Passport
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The release of the Moon Runner, Supernova Blue version, has already made the buzz at the March-April 2022 watch shows in Geneva: the comeback of HYT, the appointment of Davide Cerrato as CEO, stunning visuals and out-of-the-box creativity. While the unusually large moon in the center of the piece was the talk of the town, behind the scenes, the fabric of the suppliers also played its part: squeezing deadlines, working hard, and expanding horizons.
Fluid inside the mechanisms?
Apart from in the clepsydras of the very beginnings of time measurement, the water, the fluid, remains the sworn enemy of watchmakers and of their mechanical calibers. One day, HYT has emerged, the only watchmaking brand of excellence that is as atypical as it is playful, with the expertise to master a disruptive technology, mecha-fluidics. Based on the work of inventor Lucien Vouillamoz, the idea is to oppose two immiscible fluids (which do not mix) of distinct colors, in order to create a new way of telling time, thanks to the circular patterns that a constant pressure via two “bellows” imposes on them.
And that’ s perfect, because Éric Coudray and Paul Clémenti, two uncategorizable geniuses, are a bit like the fluids of the 601-MO caliber: they don’t hesitate to challenge each other, to oppose each other, to compete with themselves. Always in the sense of stimulating inventiveness. Fortunately, their warm-ups are always in the name of “doing better than necessary“.
Under the leadership of Purtec “Crazy Movements” (Tec Group in Vallorbes), Éric Coudray, inventor of a new breed of tourbillons, gyrotourbillons and spherillons, has conceived the 601-MO, the manual winding movement that powers the Moon Runner: 41 jewels, 72 hours of power reserve, and a frequency of 28,800 vibrations per hour, i.e. 4 Hertz.
As for the rest, in addition to the ultimate finishing and aesthetics, combining elegant satin finishes or laser and bead-blasted surfaces, there are two titanium indicator discs showing the days and months, as well as the time indications indicated by a hand running on a specific scale with a timer from 5 to 5, as well as the retrograde hours materialized by the fluidic system.
Mechafluidic technology is a new expression of science and research, dedicated to fine watchmaking
The synchronizing cam
Invented by Eric Coudray, this cam allows a perfect synchronization between the fluid time and the mechanical time. To allow the link between these two worlds within such a small space, the movement has an oversized lever, called ” sensor “. It works like a bridge because it allows the link with the working of the cam. The cam transforms a circular movement into a rectilinear movement. The whole thing is powered by two recognizable bellows that serve to regulate the movement of the two liquids: each minute’s advance in time is equivalent to a 1.5 micron compression.
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