Watchmaking The course

Online timegrapher: regulate your watch

Timegrapher · student area

Listen to your watch, and regulate it.

In the course's student area: put the watch on the microphone, plugged into your computer or phone, and the page measures the rate, the beat error and the amplitude, like the instrument in my workshop. Your calibre's lift angle comes from my movement library, and the page tells you what to adjust: the stud carrier, then the regulator.

For the course's students only. It opens in your student area, with the microphone I use in the workshop, sold with the course.

The course

The microphone

You need a microphone that touches the watch: a clamp with a piezo sensor, plugged in by USB or into the headphone socket. A computer's own microphone mostly hears the room. The one I use is sold with the course.

The lift angle

It is the angle the balance turns through while the pallet fork gives it its impulse. Each calibre has its own, and the amplitude is worked out from it: a wrong angle gives a wrong amplitude. The rate and the beat error don't depend on it. In the student area, look up your calibre: its angle comes from my library; if it isn't there, I'll give it to you.

Regulating

First the beat error (the stud carrier), then the rate (the regulator), then check in the positions. A low amplitude or a large spread between positions can't be regulated away: the watch needs a service. Regulating step by step is a chapter of the course.

The course A service

With a good microphone the rate and the beat error are right; the amplitude stays an estimate. A cheap sound card can shift the rate by a few seconds a day: the shift is the same in every position, so the spread between them stays right. The sound never leaves your device.

Contact

Write to me.