Watch Winder Settings

Automatic watches have mainsprings that wind in a clockwise, anti-clockwise or either way. There are also a minimum number of turns that would maintain the torque of the mainspring, thus keeping them wound.

Most watch winders have selections for winding direction and the number of turns. The more expensive watch winder units usually come with “Programmability” for TPD (Turns-per-Day) and Direction settings whereas the simple ones come with a factory pre-set TPD and has only the CW and CCW selector or works in an Alternating Winding (Bi-directional) cycles. Depending on the type of motor, the housing and circuitry used, both types will cost differently.

The MCU (Micro-Controller Unit), usually a programmable chip, takes care of the winding cycles and sequences. A manufacturer will eventually get the engineer or programmer to write several “files” or “programs”. Some programs will have two TPDs, while some with more. Some with only bi-directional winding, others with 3 direction selection - clockwise, counter-clockwise and both. These are often referred to as Winding or Operational Modes.

A manufacturer of an automatic timepiece would specify the minimum TPD for that particular watch model (caliber) and its best to set the winder to meet this requirement. We are truly blessed to have a complete database of TPDs in one of the winder manufacturer’s website. Yet many owners’ of automatic watches still do not make use of this awesome database and have posted questions in forums about TPD settings and their respective directions.

Winder manufacturers have created many ways to input such settings. Here are a few examples.

1. Orbita (USA) users input the TPDs and Direction by way of DIP (Dual In-Line Package) Switches.
2. ABest (Taiwan, ROC) user inputs only the TPD by way of DIP Switches, while the Directions by means of a rocker switch.
3. Wolf Design inputs winding cycles and directions using knobs (rotary switches).

Of late, another manufacturer has found a way to input settings via USB from a computer.

Whichever way, watch winder settings are important to maintain one’s watch mainspring torque and not to overstress it.

For those units that come with factory pre-set settings, the manufacturer usually sets the TPD to about 900 as most watches have a requirement of between 650 to 800TPD. 900 TPD would not stress any timepiece because of a special built-in clutch mechanism that would release “extra” mainspring tension. An increase by, say, 50% is nothing compared to wearing a timepiece for 24 hours on your wrist which actually adds much more than 3000 turns to the mechanism in random directions.

I believe the higher pre-set TPD is also to compensate for loss turns during a low battery state.

With these “programmability”, users can easily and readily select the required TPD and winding Direction for his/her individual wristwatches.

Labels: functions, watch winder features