IWC's behandling af deres titanium
#1
Syntes lige jeg ville dele denne gamle post fra IWC.com med jer, meget interessant hvis man vil vide mere om deres tilgang til titanium;

some facts about IWC's titanium

Your question:

Why is IWC not using the titanium grade 5 currently used by TAG-Heuer and Bretling? This alloy of titanium (90%), aluminium (6%) and vanadium (4%) can be highly polished. Does anyone know why IWC is not using this alloy?

This response is based on previous discussions on other forums regarding IWC’s use and manufacturing of cases and bracelets from titanium. The info I gathered was posted by several people including our moderator Michael Friedberg.

IWC had committed itself and decided to make the titanium cases on its own -- IWC accomplishing a tour de force with significant improvisation and enormous dedication. It truly is amazing that a company that previously had only experience in making watch movement parts and working with brass quickly succeeded in making a watch case from a "difficult to work with" metal like titanium.

Manufacturing the titanium case for the Porsche Design watches involved hot forging. At first, the forms used for the forging process could not withstand the high pressure involved. Finally, sintered steel forms proved to be a solution. Titanium also requires the right speed to remove material during milling, latheing and drilling. The right speed and good cooling liquids are essential to prevent (local) overheating of the material. A chip has to break at the right moment/place and not interrupt the material-removing process by sticking to the object etc.. IWC mastered all these problems and also managed to polish the material, which the technical literature at that time said was impossible. To eliminate thread erosion of titanium parts, IWC used nitride hardening (certainly before Ventura introduced their nitride hardened case), making it three times as hard as hardened steel and 1000 times harder than untreated titanium.

In attaining this status, IWC has attained probably more know how in exotic case making than any other - especially in working with Titanium.

Thus it is clear from looking at their cases, the quality of machining that shows through in the results obtained from this difficult to work with metal. In the latest incarnation of the Titanium watch by IWC, the GST series, this science of the Art of making cases has been further advanced.

The Titanium cases are machined by the removal of metal in complex processes. The case and its components are painstakingly turned, milled and drilled, allowing closer tolerances than a stamped product. That is why, it is said that the Ocean case is water resistant even without its back case gasket because of the precise fit of the machining of the case back screw threads with the case itself!

Newly developed in-house processes include covered or hidden welding of titanium (previously thought to be a material not able to be welded), controlled environment soldering and high vacuum annealing and ways of bonding the titanium with the sapphire glass by using a non-aging, non-deteriorating silver-platinum thrust ring to produce dive watches capable of 2,000m resistance to water ingress.

The latest innovation has been the nitriding process for hardening titanium and other alloys. IWC achieved a `level` of Vickers Hardness of 2,400Hv, compared to the Ventura achievement of 1,300Hv for their hardened Titanium!! This is at the `level` of synthetic sapphire and just short of Lanthanum/Boron Carbide (9 on the Mohs scale). In comparison, normal Titanium is approximately 180Hv and hardened Stainless Steel is 700-800Hv.

In addition, IWC has developed techniques for polishing and abrasive blasting of Titanium (with sapphire beads). The Titanium alloys used contain Vanadium and aluminium with extreme high temperature stability and a tensile strength of 1000Mpa.

IWC explained their current policy on the German IWC forum (24th Sept. 2001) stressing the following points:

(1) IWC did use nitrogen hardened titanium on the nato-yellow and black examples of the Porsche Design Line.

(2) They were not really satisfied with the results. Daily use could wear away even this very resistant coating. Furthermore, overhauling the cases (by etc.) proved to be very expensive, because polishing and grinding results inevitably in erasing the surface coating (and with it the colour).

(3) In current production IWC does therefore use high grade of pure titanium instead. To prevent scratches (as far as possible) they try to work out the surface structure best fitted to the material, f.e. avoiding the polishing of Titanium cases.

In an experiment done by one IWC wearer to test his titanium watch he concluded that the reason his bracelet showed only faint scratches was because IWC uses a different "finish" on their titanium (and indeed, if you look at it under a loupe -- it is micro-pebbly -- another psuedoscience term) and this disguises scratches.

Artiklen er skrevet af en Jack/JFSUPERIOUR i 2002
Link: [url]"http://www.iwc.com/forum/en/discussion/3208/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.iwc.com/forum/en/discussion/3208/[/url]
İmage
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#2
fedt - tak -
Anders 


Rolex Explorer 2 ref 216570 - Victorinox Inox - Seiko Orange Monster - Citizen divemaster "Pingo" - Casio G-Shock GD-110-1ER - Omega De Ville 1969
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#3
Selv tak, Anders. Jeg har længe undret mig over HVOR stærk titanium overfladen er på mine IWC ure ikke mindst når man engang imellem læser indlæg hvor andre beskriver titanium som 'blødt' og følsomt over for ridser. Her er lidt af forklaringen.

Anders - hvor længe har du tænkt dig at være 'ny' Icon_e_biggrin1

mvh
Michael
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#4
JA, absolut interessant læsning <!-- s:up: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_Up.gif" alt=":up:" title="Thumps up" /><!-- s:up: -->
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