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Concept

Escapement

Related publications (20)

Shaking force balancing of a 2-DOF isotropic horological oscillator

Simon Nessim Henein, Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann, Hubert Pierre-Marie Benoît Schneegans

Despite centuries of research and significant advances, the escapement mechanism used to count and maintain oscillations of mechanical time bases remains a complex mechanism and a major source of energy losses. We showed in previous work that, instead of t ...

2021

The Role of Geometrical Parameters in the Lubrication of the Swiss Lever Escapement

Stefano Mischler, Alejandro Roda Buch, Sandra Guadalupe Maldonado

The lubrication regimes of a contact pair escapement-ruby pallet of a Swiss lever escapement have been investigated combining the theory of fluid lubrication with a well-established kinematic and inverse dynamic multibody model. The kinematic analytical re ...

2021

Rocker oscillator time bases

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi

Since the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens in 1657, precision timekeepers have been regulated by oscillators. Although the pendulum is not an isochronous oscillator, its introduction as a time basis for clock regulation led to a signif ...

2021

Control-Free Mechanical Oscillator Powered by Shape Memory Alloys

Yves Perriard, Paolo Germano, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Sean Thomas

Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) based actuators have been commonly used in applications that require being compact and lightweight. In this paper, the inherent stiffness of a flexure-based linear guide is used to create a bias-spring SMA actuator which further re ...

IEEE2021

Tribological Approach to the Watch Movements

Valentine Agnès Madeleine Magnin

Mechanical watches are complex and sensitive systems that have to maintain a faultless precision over their lifetime. However, this precision can be altered by disturbances occurring during the functioning time, such as friction, lubricant drying, or wear, ...

EPFL2020

Design of a Flexure Based Low Frequency Foucault Pendulum

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi, Patrick Robert Flückiger

The Foucault pendulum is a well-known mechanism used to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. It consists in a pendulum launched on linear orbits and, following Mach’s Principle, this line of oscillation will remain fixed with respect to absolute space bu ...

2020

Flexure Pivot Oscillator With Intrinsically Tuned Isochronism

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi, Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann, Mohammad Hussein Kahrobaiyan

The most important property for accurate mechanical time bases is isochronism: the independence of period from oscillation amplitude. This paper develops a new concept in isochronism adjustment for flexure-based watch oscillators. Flexure pivot oscillators ...

2020

Flexure Pivot Oscillators for Mechanical Watches

Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann

It appears that the concerted efforts of the watchmaking industry are leading towards a limit in mechanical watch accuracy. The general consensus in horology is that the time base's quality factor, a dimensionless number that characterizes the oscillator d ...

EPFL2020

Automatically Starting and Secured Detent Escapement for a Timepiece

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi

A horological detent escapement for a horological movement arranged to transmit a torque from said horological movement to an oscillating regulating organ of said horological movement, the regulating organ comprising a first mobile body and the escapement ...

2019

Conceptual design of a rotational mechanical time base with varying inertia

Simon Nessim Henein, Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann

Flexure pivot oscillators have the potential to advantageously replace the traditional balance wheel-spiral spring oscillator used in mechanical watches due to their significantly lower friction. However, they have inherent nonlinear elastic properties tha ...

2019

Echappements à impulsion virtuelle

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi, Roland Andreas Bitterli, Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann, Laura Marie Lucie Convert

L’échappement à détente est reconnu pour sa performance chronométrique, mais il n’est pas sécurisé pour la montre-bracelet. Plusieurs échappements ont été proposés pour adapter cet échappement à la montre, dont l’échappement Robin récemment sécurisé par Au ...

2018

Theory and design of spherical oscillator mechanisms

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi, Roland Andreas Bitterli, Mohammad Hussein Kahrobaiyan, Lennart Rubbert, Billy Nussbaumer, Nicolas Ferrier

In previous work, we showed that two degree of freedom oscillators can be advantageously applied to horological time bases since they can be used to eliminate the escapement mechanism. We subsequently examined planar two degree of freedom oscillators based ...

2018

Programmable Multistable Mechanisms: Design, modeling, characterization and applications

Mohamed Gamal Abdelrahman Ahmed Zanaty

Multistable Mechanisms are mechanical devices having more than one stable state. Since these mechanisms can maintain different deformations with zero force, they are advantageous for low power environments such as wristwatches and medical devices. In this ...

EPFL2018

Gravity-Insensitive Flexure Pivot Oscillators

Simon Nessim Henein, Ilan Vardi, Etienne Frédéric Gabriel Thalmann, Mohammad Hussein Kahrobaiyan, Lennart Rubbert

Classical mechanical watch plain bearing pivots have frictional losses limiting the quality factor of the hairspring-balance wheel oscillator. Replacement by flexure pivots leads to a drastic reduction in friction and an order of magnitude increase in qual ...

2018

Ultrasonic driving method

Jacques Jacot

A method for driving a first component (11) into a second component (12) by superimposing a mechanical wave of ultrasonic frequency (18) onto the movement (17) of at least one of the components (11, 12). The method comprises a step of adjusting the paramet ...

2016

Escapement-Based Movements as Positioning Mechanisms: Design and Modelling

Romain David Besuchet

This work has been triggered by an industrial project targeting the design of a mechatronic injector for the medical field. Injections are usually performed using a syringe, a quite clumsy tool that transforms the injection task in a positioning one. The q ...

EPFL2016

Analyse, synthèse et création d'échappements horlogers par la théorie des engrenages

Olivier Laesser

In principle, knowledge of watch and clock escapements is acquired through the study of the geometry and operation of numerous realizations, studied patiently one after the other. Knowing the classics, one can hope to construct a new realizations by borrow ...

EPFL2014

Un nouveau régulateur mécanique pour une réserve de marche exceptionnelle

Simon Nessim Henein, Philippe Schwab

«Voyager, c’est bien utile, ça fait travailler l’imagination» (Céline). C’est à l’occasion d’un voyage en train entre Neuchâtel et Genève que Pierre Genequand, alors ingénieur au CSEM, eut l’idée d’associer les avantages des structures flexibles et les car ...

2014

Immobilizing device for a toothed wheel

Simon Nessim Henein, Fabiano Colpo

The invention relates to an immobilizing device for a toothed wheel suitable for the field of horology where it can be part of a direct- or indirect-impulse escapement, in particular in a wristwatch. This immobilizing device (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) comprises: — ...

European Patent Office2011

Conception et optimisation multicritère des échappements libres pour montres-bracelets mécaniques

Thierry Conus

The watchmaking crisis of the nineteen-seventies in effect marked an interruption of scientific research into the working of mechanical watches. For the past few years, a revival of interest in these timepieces has given industrialists the financial resour ...

EPFL2007