Editor's Picks
The Richard Mille Sapphire Marvels
Editor's Picks
The Richard Mille Sapphire Marvels
In the years since, Mathys has held the helm for developing and producing Richard Mille watches. He initially spoke to Mille about the idea of producing a complete top section for the case made of crystal about four years ago.
Stettler
To undertake the project, Mille turned to Switzerland’s (and possibly the world’s) foremost crystal firm: “Stettler Sapphire”. A privately-held, family-run firm, it is the typical example of a Swiss specialisation. Stettler produces the sapphire crystals for a number of high-end watch firms; certainly a few from the Richemont Group, from the LVMH group, and other larger and smaller independents who require complex crystal shapes for their watches. Mille had used Stettler for the crystal dials on his watches already, so he knew of their premier status and quality in the market.
A crystal is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The atomic structure makes sapphire crystal similar to and second only to diamond in terms of hardness. It makes the crystal resistant to any change in shape, but by the same token, it is very difficult to machine into a complex shape. Crystals are grown from an initial seed by a variety of methods. The resulting raw crystal shapes are then used for a number of different purposes. The smaller, round, crystals (produced by – for example – the Stepanov method) are cut to into discs, shaped to be perfectly round, and then polished on machines that revolve the discs against a paste. Get enough cutting machines, and enough polishing discs, and you can produce about 60,000 round flat watch crystals in a year for any one set of machines.
The Complexities of the Crystal RM 056 Case Shape
What is different about the Richard Mille watch case is the three-part structure, where the three parts have to fit to within an allowance of 1/100 of a millimetre. The RM 056 is after all, a fully functioning Richard Mille case with a water resistant rating of 30 metres. It is one of the most complex case shapes to manufacture – even when the case is made out of known materials – as the tolerances are such that specialised measuring equipment is employed to ensure accuracy.
Cresting Hurdles
One way to give the ‘cost’ of the research and development for the RM 056 some perspective, is to consider what else could have been achieved with the same resources (an opportunity cost) committed towards fabricating the case. Think of it this way, instead of producing the five Richard Mille RM 056 cases in each iteration (the RM 056, RM 056-01, and the RM 056-02), Stettler could have produced approximately 60,000 curved watch crystals in the year. The annual production for the whole factory would be about 120,000. In other words, five RM 056 cases represented half of Stettler’s annual production. Five RM 056 cases took a year to produce; or about two and a half months each. Just the necessary outlay on the new ultrasonic cutting machine was approximately the entire year’s revenue on normal spherical sapphire crystals.
A Trail of “Bleeding Edge” Innovation
Once Mille had developed the technology he was able to push forward and develop more complex sapphire crystal watches: the RM 056-01, RM 056-02 and the RM 053-01. What started out as research and development for just a single watch case turned out to be basis for a series of watches and a watch that can withstand the most brutal of impacts on the crystal itself.
The RM 056 series and the research into sapphire crystals has spawned a series of crystal watches by other watch firms. Richard Mille might not have been the first: but the other watches were simple round cases with standard movements. What Mille did was something completely different and because of that, he was the precursor to the current spate of crystal case watches on the market. The casework and design entailed both the vision to see it, see it through, and the research and technical achievements to realise that vision. It becomes a lot easier to see a solution once someone else has demonstrated that it can be done. The racing machine on your wrist continues to lead the rest of the field.