> I'm an electrical engineer, not a watchmaker. Mass-producing a product > that doesn't fill with water when submerged is MUCH more difficult than > making it so that it won't malfunction if it gets a few raindrops on it. > Try it some time. There are a lot of tricks involved that I'm not privy to.
As a watchmaker and owner of a watch company, I have some experience with this. We use wet testers for high WR dive watches (over 10atm), and dry testers for both. Neither can duplicate real world conditions, but in the rare instance we receive a watch back that has leaked, I have never believed the customer when they say they are sure the crown was snug, although we have always considered it to be a warranty repair. It would probably be the same with the screwed crystal/bezel. We had one customer finally admit that he wore his watch in a 105 degree hot tub. It happened to be a model with a huge, 43mm sapphire crystal and lots of air inside. Mostly on models with WR under 30atm, crystals are pressed into gaskets made of nylon-like material (forgot what its called) and of course they are only tested with positive pressure. So you can imagine the damage he did. Watch cases designed for greater WR usually have crystals screwed down to the case with a large, threaded retainer so they can better resist negative pressure. I would recommend including spare gaskets, and they should be lubricated with silicone grease because they will be opened often. As a point of information, the usual minimum order that watch case manufacturers will take seriously, is 300 pieces. The factories that produce blanks will not make less than 500 so either way, 500 blanks will be paid for. Small production runs of CNC'd cases may be possible, but they will be expensive. There is no standard lug spacing. Any even spacing - 20mm, 22mm, 24mm, more, less, etc., is fine. Something like 23mm would be considered non- standard. Straps of any size and shape can be ordered easily. Mitch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
