Table of contents
- how VIDEKA started
- inspiration(s)
- bringing VIDEKA to life
- early jumper prototypes
- designing the case
- legibility
- testing the new jumper
- my problem with the jumper mechanisms
- meet the geneva drive mechanism
- another case design
- getting the right materials
- debugging the geneva drive mechanism
- what was the elegant solution?
- aesthetics
- back to the geneva drive
- more aesthetic updates for the watch that barely works!
- the results so far..
- final hurdles for VIDEKA
- jams
- molds
- releasing fairly
- see you soon!
how VIDEKA started
A friend of mine, from a killer new clothing brand based in India reached out asking if I had ever considered a jump hour watch. something with the numbers centered vertically or horizontally. little did he know i spent the last 6 months obsessing over the cartier tank a guichets. finally, someone had asked for the watch I’ve been wondering if I could even remotely, possibly make. what could go wrong? i felt so seen. nothing could stop me.
inspiration(s)
i tried to start small - i really did, i bought a farasuite on alibaba and it never came. i tried dipping my toe in but having to file a complaint to get my money back irked me. someone needed to make a decent new jump hour (i hadn’t discovered the handful of brilliant independent jump hour watch makers yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
i began to wonder, if all the examples i see are either scams or $800 art deco display pieces. it’d be perfect if someone could build something unique and new for around the same price.. right? ( again .. hadn’t found the really talented jump hour makers on instagram at this point :D)
bringing VIDEKA to life
early jumper prototypes
so i started prototyping. using everything i thought i knew on how to make a jump hour mechanism..
i knew nothing..
i mean, looking back - the results were deceivingly successful. yes the screw holding the hour wheel was stripping the plastic already, the wheels were illegible, the jumper barely did anything.. but it was spinning and pressing the other wheel to turn once each hour, that wasn’t always going to be a given for later prototypes.
designing the case
i planned to create a case where a rectangular crystal could be press fit and then that would be the full display - i hadn’t considered much of magnification, whether my jumper design would work, or really the consequences of any of my actions. such hubris. such folly.
legibility
to help with reading the values (on this mechanism that didn’t even work yet? looking back on all this is so humbling..) i went for a white material i could hand paint in, and polish off any excess. i also filled in the square window for small magnification windows. my thinking was the magnification would pair well with the newly contrasting numbers and make the watch incredibly legible. it sure did…n’t
testing the new jumper
after testing the last prototype out a bit - the clear material for the jumper mechanism was sheering and hard to read (because being wildly small had nothing to do with it.? hindsight‘s 20/20) and so, I needed to switch to a white material with better flexibility for wear and tear.
by the end of testing this setup I was starting to realize that i may not be suited to pull off a jumper mechanism at all … also at this font size, it would have to be a watch for ants
my problem with the jumper mechanisms
i can’t make one. after a few dissections of cheap jump hour movements, i realized even with clever compliant mechanisms, this wasn’t going to be something I could do well with plastics and resins. jumpers were out of my depth and tooling.
meet the geneva drive mechanism
i took stock of what other makers had done and after screenshotting more geneva drive mechanisms than i care to count and getting some advice from a very talented friend w/ experience in geneva drives ;) i decided to build my own
the results were so crude - the sla resin that formed these parts was falling through in post processing and at thinner layers the supports are nearly as strong as the material itself - take a look:
the glossy sides were predictable, but faces with supports were so bad. even w/ sla printer’s high resolutions, there is still a critical mass these parts need to express features well. i guess the reported tolerances ain’t s*** when you’re making super small stuff. that went out the window w/ my sanity.
another case design
while debugging materials I realized the circular hour window at the top of the watch, and the rectangular-ish window at the bottom looked pretty bad. plus the hours have to wander while the geneva drive works and a small window would mean you don’t know what hour it is during transitions.
hard to spin that bug as a feature so i made both windows the big ellipse/rectangle.
getting the right materials
next i realized that certain sla materials had wildly different dimensionalities than others. i tried just picking a material with better dimensionality, but, in almost every case, the material was less durable.
one made of all accura xtreme white 200 (excuse the busted thumb)
one made of accura 60
the white material was so much stronger but it overprinted almost every time. the machine was precise though. so the overprint was predictable, and correlated to the thickness of the part. I also realized the overprint was less on thicker components when i did a test print of the case body. so, I adjusted dimensions to user thicker parts and because the expected overprinting is thinner, on thicker parts, I would have less overprint compared to my CAD, and I could just configure additional space between gears to accommodate the slight overprinting. all of this would lower the delta between the printed parts and the original ideal CAD’d dimensions!
i feel like doc hudson saying that..
I also came to find that accura clearvue was an ideal material for the outer case prototype prints. it wasn’t very strong but it had great dimensionality and its weakness was a great indicator for stress points during testing. the bug really can be a feature!
debugging the geneva drive mechanism
so at this point i started getting my first “big boy” problems. this was the first time the design itself was getting tested and the mechanism was failing in a way i could replicate. replicating a bug easily, is like feeling a headache coming on while you’re sitting next to a bottle of advil. sweet relief is just around the corner.
so i cut the watch open to view it from the side while i recreated the bug
it’s hard to see in this photo but i came to realize the edges of the geneva gear were not expressed fully and the gear was slipping past the center column of the minute wheel.
So in the photo ^ the red is where the walls that I would have expected to collide with the half-cylinder weren’t there (from post processing sanding and strange printing issues.?) and with vibrations, or poor mounting, or error stacking along the z-axis, the hour wheel could slip into a “half-step” jam where it would get locked between two hours ever when it shouldn’t have been transitioning. see an example of the jam here
what was the elegant solution?
increase the thicknesses of the gears, thereby increasing the surface area of the pins and teeth. if there’s more material it’s harder to f*** up. plus this was the point i was starting to really appreciate the critical mass needed to getting accurate and precise parts.
aesthetics
at the beginning of the project the plan was to screw a metal plate to the front. because what’s the best way to show off your clear resin? covering it. exactly. in all honesty it’s still my favorite style of wearing it - so juxtapositional. so existential.
i started sharing the photo above with friends and family and got some banner feedback. thanks to all those great folks who pointed out they would love to have a different guard to see into the case. started with and iphone sketch and turned it into this!
i hadn’t considered that people may actually want to see both disks inside the watch until this point. this is one of those moments you are so happy you got outside opinions.
back to the geneva drive
after more conversations w/ folks more skilled in geneva drives than me (this is a low bar but the advice came from someone uber smart) → it was time to switch the printed pin on the minutes wheel to a metal one.
i went on to switch to a captive pin and then back to a dowel pin during the rest of this process but honestly, it was one of the simplest and most effective improvements i had made. having a smooth and accurate pin that could be undersized for the geneva gear’s channels made the mechanism run wayyy smoother.
it was at this point i realized why my secret geneva gear tutor would sign off most emails with a “and switch to a metal pin!!” .. it’s almost like it’s a good idea to listen to smart people..?
more aesthetic updates for the watch that barely works!
at this point i was sick of using watch straps from my last model because it felt like a half measure. I thought i needed to do something that tied the picture together
i wanted to make it integrated too, i wanted something that blended that square case into a strap elegantly.. and i had 2 ideas
the design on the right felt like it belonged to hublot - but the design on the left.. that would let me add in a design i had been wanting to use for a while.
can you guess what it is?
i’ll give you a hint, it’s peak design and luxury incarnate. haute horology will bow to my mastery of physical design ..
a park bench.
in all seriousness i loved the design and the angles and i’ve been wanting to put this into a watch almost as long as I’ve wanted to make a jump hour tank. it’s a match made in heaven.
now what to do for the strap?
a photo martin frei took of the side of some building! no seriously. it’s plays with empty space beautifully and that could correlate really well into a tpu 3d printed strap for breathability. i hope martin smiles kindly on my theft of his instagram feed.
the results so far..
final hurdles for VIDEKA
jams
when the geneva mechanism’s driver and gear are ≥ 0.2mm vertically separated from each other, jamming can occur. this is almost entirely driven by “error stacking” which is the sum of errors of things just slightly off.
(it’s an ugly photo but i’m not thinking of aesthetics when the watch is jammed)
to fix this i’ve updated the design to better center the hour wheel, i’ve updated the teeth geometry to encourage a slip rather than a jam, and I’ve updated the case clamp geometries to use consistent dimensions of the tabs to ensure the movement is at center. finally i’ve started oiling the geneva drive mechanism. the combination of this has resulted in a watch that’s kept time while firing from berreta shotguns, crashing on snowboards, and extended fixed gear bike rides.
✅ jams have been fixed
molds
we hadn’t discussed the molding process up until this point but it very well may be the most important and possibly most complex.
up to this point cases had been 3 printed, inserts were friction fit, and the finishes were lack luster. in order to do the resin part of my job correctly i still need to react inject resin to form the case. in order to pull off a design as insane as the watch case without 3d printing I needed to create an insert- and over-mold system that allowed me to use over 17 screws , 3 core pins, and 9 threaded inserts not to mention 4, 3d printed and threaded mold exteriors with the most complex of which to feature M1 threaded holes to suspend inserts into a silicone over-molded interior casing. all to cast this one case into existence.
the gold components you see on the indents of the watch face are the brass inserts that are suspended in the void of the mold to be surrounded by resin.
releasing fairly
as someone who has never had good luck with “drops” i wanted to introduce a system to ensure a more relaxing and fair method to releasing these watches.
i’ll be opening orders for 10 minute windows, for each person on the early-access list, in order of who signed up first.
here’s how the release will go:
the first person who signed up will get an email with a code. this code will allow them to purchase the watch. they will be the only person to have the opportunity to buy a VIDEKA for the next 10 minutes. after 10 minutes have passed since the email was sent to the first signup, the second person on the list will be emailed with the access-code. at this point, both the first and second person on the list will have the ability to purchase a VIDEKA. this will continue until the last person on the list has ended their 10 minute window, at which point i will open the orders to anyone on my site.
[ 0 min ]---------[ 10 min ]---------[ 20 min ]---------[ 30 min ]---
| | | |
Person #1 gets code Person #2 gets code Person #3 gets code Person #4 gets code
(Exclusive access) -> (#1 & #2 can buy) -> (#1, #2, #3 can buy) -> etc.
Once the final person’s 10-minute window has ended, everyone can purchase a VIDEKA.
this will allow you to have a pre-determined window of time to be ready to secure your watch if you so choose without the panic of bots or people with faster internet that you.
this is done in hopes of showing my appreciation to those of you who have taken the time to sign up for early access and allowing you enough time to make getting your watch pleasant - rather than a panic.
the only caveat is there are more people signed up for early access than the number of VIDEKA’s i planned to make so please be prompt and i will do my best to make sure you get one.
once the early-access release window has ended, all bets are off and the VIDEKA will be open to anyone online who wishes to buy one.
see you soon!
i plan to reach out on social media and via early-access email signups in the coming weeks with the date i will be sending out the early-access codes and then releasing them on the site.
i so look forward to sharing this project with you. it’s has been a massive part of my life for the last 11 months and i am deeply grateful for all your support.
i can’t wait to share more of this journey with you all - see you soon!