Richard Mille
The RM 006: Richard Mille’s First Race Machine on the Wrist
Richard Mille
The RM 006: Richard Mille’s First Race Machine on the Wrist
Haute Horlogerie 2.0
By 2004 when the RM006 was launched, carbon fibre had already been used in the construction of Formula 1 cars. With this material, engineers could achieve extreme lightness and structural strength at the same time, increasing speed while reducing fuel consumption. The modern day Formula 1 car is a racing car in its purest form — its sculptured form and performance are for one purpose only, to race – and it is a purity of form and function that has been elevated to the realm of art, as seen by the Chicago Institute of Art exhibiting a Ferrari F1 car.
Theory Crash Validated
That the watch, and driver for that matter, performed beyond expectations is testament to Mille’s confidence in both. Not only did the watch perform, it survived (fortunately along with the driver) a horrific crash (at the practice for the Canadian Grand Prix) and endured G-forces beyond the usual test conditions, and beyond what was thought to be the tolerances of a mechanical watch. In short, Mille had created a watch that was a number of firsts: the first watch that was not only assigned to a racecar driver, but was also worn in race conditions. A watch constructed using metals and materials at the very edge of science, and that had particular relevance for the engineering and construction of Formula 1 cars.
The watch was made in a very limited edition of 25 pieces and the price was simply the cost of bringing the watch to market: the research and development, the cost of manufacture, and a return on the capital. Mille then used the same marketing techniques from most high-end automobile manufacturers and offered the watch (first) to existing owners of Richard Mille watches. Mille had created the first sports watch of its kind: a watch that was made of the same materials, using similar techniques, to be worn in the heat of competition and survive the conditions. It was the model for extreme-performance sports or and tourbillon watches that he would produce in the coming years.
Torching Convention
At the time of its launch, and indeed to this very day, the RM006 was a sensation. How could such a watch (made out of non-precious materials) be priced so high? What was missed at the time, and perhaps is missed now (not just with the RM006, but with all the Richard Mille high end tourbillon watches) is the cutting edge aspect to the watch that has perhaps been diluted over time by other watch manufacturers using the same materials in various aspects of the watch. What is generally overlooked with Richard Mille watches is that being first requires not only the thought and realisation of the idea, but a substantial investment. For a small firm such as Richard Mille S.A. (especially in the early days of the 2000s), this was especially so. The degree of investment was so severe, in fact, that had the project not realised a watch, the financial commitment would have potentially finished the fledgling enterprise.
Using a metal that had been around for over 200 years, named after the Titans of Greek mythology, Mille chose a grade of titanium that allowed some malleability in the case shape. However, where the watch gained much recognition (and now legendary status) was in using a material well known to the automotive and space technology world, but in a new process form: carbon. Mille’s carbon baseplate would shape a number of developments in the haute horlogerie world for the decade to come, with carbon becoming a byword for almost anything advanced in watchmaking.
The metal from the gods: titanium
While a number of watch manufacturers now use titanium in some form, in watch cases, or movement parts, Mille was the first to actually give the grade of titanium any form of consideration, and used it as a baseplate in the latter RM001’s and early RM002’s.
There are, in fact, 38 grades of titanium at the current time. Grading is down to the type of titanium alloy created and the intended end use for that alloy. Hence, there is no overarching grading system where a scale determines whether the titanium is less or more rigid or malleable or strong. Each time a new titanium metal needs to be created, it creates a new grade.
Titanium grade 9 tends to be the commercially used variant, along with grade 38. While both have similar mixes of aluminium and vanadium in the alloy, grade 38 has iron which improves the cold working of the metal (machine cutting for example). Some grades of titanium are now redundant as they have been superseded by others. Mille selected grade 5N, not only for the case, but also for other elements within the watch and movement, such as the screws and the bridges.
Miracle Material: Carbon
Given Mille’s objectives, carbon fibre was a natural choice to incorporate into a performance watch. He admired the material’s isomorphic properties: carbon is resistant to heat, cold and does not warp. As such, it was ideal – if the process could be found to manufacture a carbon baseplate to the necessary standard.
The process of creating carbon nanofibre was a known one: it involved taking carbon strands and compressing the carbon at temperature into a solid form. The material had been used in transport for some time (not only cars, but airplanes and trains). Carbon nanofibre had been in use previously for brake pads for the space shuttle (among other applications) and a young aeronautical engineer, who subsequently trained as a watchmaker, Frederic Garinaud, found the company that could manufacture the carbon nanofibre baseplates. Even today, ten years on, there is only one firm (located in California, USA) that produces the carbon nanofibre to the required standard. Garinaud’s knowledge of esoteric space age materials (not just on the RM006, but later for the RM021) helped Mille realise the watch from computer-projected images into an actual working entity.
For the first problem, it turned out after extensive trials that dust was not an issue. Indeed, the compressed carbon fibre was so dense and resistant that the CNC machine tools for drilling and machining the ‘blank’ of carbon nanofibre into the required shape were not up to the task. A 1998 report on NASA applications of molecular nanotechnology noted that carbon nanofibre was one of the “… lightweight materials … that are 100 times stronger than steel.” Hence, when it came to drilling and machining, the usual drilling and machining bits were not robust enough and became worn down even before the task was complete. The problem was not dust; it was extreme structural strength and rigidity, the very properties that Mille wanted for his watch.
Movement Design
To minimise weight further, the construction of the tourbillon movement was redesigned. Gone was the reliance on plates that would hold the drive train of the movement. Instead, the movement was constructed onto the carbon nanofibre baseplate using various ‘struts’ that held the winding barrel, the drive train, and the tourbillon escapement. The parts of the movement that held it to the baseplate were screwed into special sleeves that had been glued into the carbon nanofibre baseplate. Gluing became a necessity because of the way carbon acts with the metal. Despite the hardness of the carbon nanofibre, when screws were applied to the material, it acted as sand: the screws could not hold in the baseplate. Glue was therefore applied to sleeves and fitted into the baseplate. The screws could be attached to the sleeves within the carbon nanofibre. Once again, technology was borrowed from the space shuttle. The same glue that held the heat resistant tiles to the space shuttle also holds the metal sleeves to the RM006 baseplate. The same glue is also used within the construction of modern Formula 1 cars. The watch weighed in at just 42 grams.
A future classic
The RM006 has become something of a rarity and might yet prove to be the rarest of the Richard Mille tourbillions on the secondhand market. What is now accepted as (almost) common materials in the higher end watches from other manufacturers was then, when the RM006 debuted, a rarity. Not one of the 25 RM006’s have come up for sale on the auction market and they are rarely seen on the wrist of a collector. There is something very original about the idea, and the concept and execution of the idea, in a watch designed for sports ambassadors. While the RM006 would be developed further into the RM009, the concept was put into form with the earlier watch. As with any experimental race car, where new technology or materials were introduced, the future tends to see them as the avant-garde. In that vein, the RM006 is without doubt a future classic.