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Timing the Swing: Richard Mille’s RM 038
News
Timing the Swing: Richard Mille’s RM 038
While some of the forces acting on a watch are the same for a golfer as they are for a tennis player, there is a difference between the two sports in the impact force acting on the watch as part of the wrist. The connection a tennis racquet has with a ball is essentially soft, with netting as part of the racquet that also has an ability to ‘give’ at the point of impact. This still does not negate the fact that about 400G’s are impacted on the watch mechanism each time a backhand is played on the wrist of Rafael Nadal.
For that reason, Mille set out to design a watch that could cope with such forces. The result was the RM038 “Bubba Watson”: a limited series of 38 watches. For the RM038 watch case, Mille returned to what he had learned developing the RM009 and RM027. The cases for the latter two watches were built for different purposes. For the RM009, the objective was a light metal capable of withstanding direct impact if necessary (although hopefully not!). For the RM027, the casing had to be even lighter, although the impact properties were not as severe for the case as required for the RM009. For the RM038, Mille employed another esoteric metal alloy that allowed other properties of case manufacture to be explored.
The coating given to the watch casing was electro-plasma oxidation treatment named Miarox (R); the white colouring was from the crystalline oxide ceramic with a high ratio of very resistant composites such as MgAl spinels. It all sounds very technical and cutting edge, but the practical applications of this process is that it improved both the hardness and scratch resistance of the alloy: its wear resistance and corrosion resistance. The MgAl spinel is a more technical way of saying that the atomic structure of the coating is a very regular hexagonal pattern. Material bonding that has such a regular hexagonal shape is very tough and the bonds between atoms are very strong in such a lattice structure. What appears hyperbole and marketing speak actually has a very real application: a very tough and durable coating to the metal that becomes part of the metal itself.
As with most of Mille’s innovations, the original inspiration came from cutting edge auto engineering. Usually such finishing (Miarox) is found on the outside of engine pistons (the coating is almost self lubricating) to reduce friction. However, the Miarox coating is also used on more mundane everyday household goods such as irons (the underside of the iron that is in contact with your clothing) or the coating of the outer shells on mobile phones.
For the baseplate and bridges Mille returned to using titanium. Titanium was chosen over the other esoteric metals Mille had used in the past, as the bridges in particular had to be rigid and strong enough given the sudden pressures that would be applied to the mechanism. In particular, a special lattice bridge was designed and manufactured to not only hold the mechanism in place but to also hold the pin for the hour and minute hands.
For the RM038 series there has only been two other variants. The first was a very limited edition of only four watches to celebrate that initial victory by Bubba at the US Masters in 2012: the RM038-Victory. Basically the same as the original RM038 but with a green inner bezel (the green matching the green of the jacket for the US Masters victor) and Bubba’s signature on the back of the watch.