Reply With QuoteYes .. I have the original Accutron Railroad Approved, so the size is pretty true to the original, which is a good thing in my book, albeit it is now an automatic, which seems a bit odd when it is branded as "Accutron".Originally Posted by abraxas
That is 34mm !!?
THIN is the new BLACK
Yes .. I have the original Accutron Railroad Approved, so the size is pretty true to the original, which is a good thing in my book, albeit it is now an automatic, which seems a bit odd when it is branded as "Accutron".
In reference to the Electrostatic, what we haven't been told is...
WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
THIN is the new BLACK
https://wornandwound.com/introducing...atic-movement/
But rather overpriced IMO/
That is a wonderful thing of beauty. Industrial design at its finest. They made such effort to design the tuning fork within the acceptable size of the watches of the time. I am a huge fan of the original Trons. I still have a NOS gold plated with fixed bracelet Spaceview in storage.
THIN is the new BLACK
Have you posted this in reference to the "humming"? I don't think he is talking about the Electrostatic. I don't think he has even seen one.
THIN is the new BLACK
Spot on.
The fix with the Seiko Kinetics is simply to replace the cap with a modern one, not a rechargeable battery.
There will be a cap in the electrostatic Accutron, just like the Seiko, it needs one to keep it supplied with energy when the generators aren't spinning. But it won't be a low voltage, high capacitance one like the Seiko kinetic. Instead it will be a high voltage, low capacitance jobby. The same principle but a totally different construction and different insulating material (dielectric) between the plates.
A high capacitance low voltage "supercap" has very large plates with a very thin dielectric. The bigger the plates and the thinner the dielectric, the larger the capacitance in Farads. The bigger the capacitance in farads, the more energy you can store.
Unfortunately, Physics makes us deal with a several cruel compromises.
Firstly there's the whole physical size thing. It's easy to make a capacitor that will store a lot of energy. Just make one with huge plates. I mean plates the size of a house. Easy peasy. Just not very convenient. Sadly if we want the device to be portable, we have to accept that it must be squeezed into a constrained volume. Which means if we can't make the plates bigger we have to make the dielectric thinner.
And now: introducing "breakdown voltage", the voltage at which an insulator stops being an insulator and starts conducting. This is what happens to air when you get a spark. Air is normally an insulator, but exceed the breakdown voltage and it becomes a conductor and you see the spark. The breakdown voltage of an insulator is measured in volts per meter.
Air has a breakdown voltage of around 3 million volts per meter. Place two electrodes 1 meter apart and connect them to a 3 million volt battery and there will be a spark. More than likely there will also be a dead experimentor. Move the electrodes apart, no spark. But as you move them closer together, the voltage needed to achieve breakdown drops. At half a meter, it's a mere 1.5 million volts. 240V will cause an spark in air over a gap of 0.08mm and so on.
Back to our cap, we were trying to make the insulating material between the plates as thin as possible. Unfortunately this reduces the maximum working voltage of the cap as the thin insulator has a low breakdown voltage. Supercaps like the one in the Seiko Kinetic have a very low working voltage. Typically below 5V. The Wimshurst generators you can see in the electrostatic Bulova generate thousands of volts, making this type of capacitor useless.
Fortunately the amount of energy stored in a capacitor is equal to the capacitance * Voltage2. So we can alternatively build a capacitor with smaller plates (therefore lower capacitance) and a thicker dielectric. As It has a lower capacitance, it stores less energy per volt. But we can use it at a much higher voltage, so we can still store a decent amount of energy in the same volume. We don't just change the ratio of plate area to separation, we select totally different materials, not just for the dielectric, but for the plates too.
Both types of cap operate on the same principle of storing energy as an electrostatic field between the insulated plates. But the construction and technology are totally different.
TLDR:
Both Seiko kinetic and this watch use capacitors to store energy so they keep going when the generators aren't spinning.
Early Kinetics used early supercaps and they fail. Modern supercaps are much better.
This electrostatic watch will use a completely different type of capacitor tot he Seiko kinetic. It has a completely different type of construction and won't fail in the same manner as the early Seikos.
Love the innovation, hate the price.
Sent from my SM-A505FN using TZ-UK mobile app
Accutron: Rebirth Of An Icon (video)
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/ac...rth-of-an-icon
Last edited by abraxas; 16th October 2020 at 13:02.
THIN is the new BLACK
The leatherman's watch is not running. The secs hand is stuck at 12.
THIN is the new BLACK
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