Giving your broken Watch Winder a New Life

Sometimes a watch winder breaks down just when your warranty expires. Sad!

Two choices you can make; get it repaired or throw it out!

To get it repaired, you’d probably have to send it to the seller who then delivers it for you to the distributor and in turn collectively sends it to the country-of-origin (factory) to get it repaired. Sounds familiar? Read on.

This takes time and money. You’ll probably have to pay enough money to get at least 50% of a new watch winder. Cost of freight to and from, applicable customs taxes, the replacement parts, seller’s and distributor’s service charges all add up to a substantial amount. So you decide to part with it.

Where do all these broken winders end-up? Perhaps it’ll go to the dumpster on the way to land-fills. Very Sad!

Instead of throwing them away, why not give it a New Lease of Life? Salvage any usable parts and throw what’s not working. Watch Winders could easily be rejuvenated.


Here’s what I’ll do if I have one on hand.

1) Identify the problem; instinctively if the watch is not rotating when ON, it must be the motor. I have never encountered a burnt circuit unless the board is poorly designed.

2) Unscrew the base-plate or the cover, and then locate the motor. Some motors can only be released once the rotating cup is removed.

3) Once you have the motor, you can now go to any surplus stores to find an equivalent. Please take note of the original RPM and voltage the dead motor provides.

4) After some modifications (much will depend on your handyman skills) you will be able to fit it all back (with a stroke of genius or plain luck) and get it working again.

5) But let’s say the housing is damaged.

6) Again with some handyman skills, you could build a new housing using all usable electronic and/or mechanical parts from the old unit. Do take a look at my other homemade watch winders to get an idea.

7) When making the housing, don’t forget to have the rotating cups tilted at an angle. There are certain technical principals and some calculations to this and I do apologize if I won’t elaborate much on this for business and personal reasons. Just follow the older unit.

8) Lastly, don’t expect the modified winder unit to be a top-of-the-line piece. It’s your very own one-of-a-kind masterpiece watch winder that you have put your heart into.

I had a defective winder brought to me by one of a friend’s friend. After turning ON the unit, the motor was moving but rather sluggishly and was noisy to my standards. My instinct tells me it was a motor problem. I took apart the motor and the gear-head, tested the motor first and found it ok. When I opened the gear-head, I was surprised to find most of the lubricant (motor grease) had dried-up or wasn’t put enough in the first place.
 
Picture 1 shows the extent of “dryness” inside the gear assembly. Most of the oil turned into flakes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A quick test and the motor started whirling again much quieter now. After assembling the motor into his watch winder unit, it performed well enough…like new!

Do recycle whatever you can. I’m not on a campaign to save the earth or anything; I’m just helping you save some money.

Labels: Watch Winder Repair

Watch Winder Restoration

Recently, I’ve was requested to repair a watch winder which the owner had attempted to do so himself but failed. My immediate thoughts were, to repair it and at the same time give an honest opinion about the winder.


Picture 1
The first thing I noticed when I opened the unit was the sheet metal that the manufacturer has placed on the reclined board. In my opinion, since this is where the motors are mounted, the reclined board is crucial in absorbing noise generated by the motor gears as it rotates. So why did they use this material which will somehow sustain or maybe reverberates on its own? I guess the manufacturer wants to have a stereo effect when both sides vibrate.

The second surprise was that the viewing window was made from clear mica instead of the usual acrylic (or Plexiglass) which was rather disappointing.


As you may already noticed, each rotor winds two watch simultaneously on a winding cup. The cups or bowls, whatever you call it, has the same glossy lacquer as the exterior. Incidentally, they are made from wood. The ultra-suede was a fine touch to make it luxurious.

Overall, the housing construction was good but I’m no wood expert and therefore can’t tell what kind of wood was used. The base and interior, I know, is made with MDF.

Picture 2
There are four screws that secure the base. Opening it up, I found that the owner has thrown away the gear-head of one motor assembly leaving just the motor itself. The chalk marks, I think, is some kind of signature of the person assembling the unit.


Placed directly on the battery compartment, I saw a tiny circuit board which has a flash PROM and interestingly, there was a socket for LEDs but the manufacturer didn’t have any on the unit. My guess is they wanted to save a few cents.

Replacing the motor assembly had to be done in pairs for this unit as both were totally DOA.

Picture 3
To release the winding cup from the motor, I had to peel open the watch slots compartment to access beneath the cups. There were two screws underneath holding the motor shaft. Once I’ve unscrewed the cups, removing the motor was a breeze.


By the way, the watch slots were also well lacquered.



 
 
Picture 4
Picture shows a close up of the interior.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Picture 5
Next thing I had to do was to desolder the motors and replace it with two new ones. I have three Mabuchi samples on hand, so two would go into this unit.


Plugging all wires into the connectors, it’s time for a test run. It runs smoothly with no noise.

So its time to re-assemble the unit and go for a “weighted test”.

 
 
 
Picture 6


I have a new problem now.

1) The new motors rotate at 8RPM but I’m not sure of the winding cycles.

2) The slide switch at the rear shows 3 settings: - Automatic, Long-run Automatic and Continuous.


The owner seems to have misplaced the manual. So I had to figure out the winding sequence and the TPD settings.


Findings
At Automatic, the unit turns CW for about 1.5 minutes and stops for about 5 minutes, then continues in a CCW direction for 1.5 minutes and stops for 5 minutes. With an 8rpm rotation, this gives about 2659tpd both ways in 24 hours. That is, about 1329.5tpd in each direction.

At Long-run Automatic, the unit turns for 30 minutes, the stops for 120 minutes before repeating in the CCW direction. This mode gives about 1152tpd in each the CW and CCW direction.

In the Continuous mode, the unit turns CW for 60 minutes, the stops for about 10 seconds then CCW for another 60 minutes and stops for 10 seconds. In a day, this mode provides in excess of 11,520tpd in both combined directions. Way too high.


Immediate Solution
I have to disable the “Continuous Mode” because it provides far too much TPD than the watch needs. De-soldering the wires was the quickest (and neatest) way.


The owner needs to know about this issue.


Conclusion
1) The construction of the housing was excellent and the glossy exterior makes it look expensive on the outside.

2) The inclined plane holding the motors/winding cups should be made from full MDF so that noises generated by the gears can easily be absorbed by it.

3) The lowest TPD provided by this unit is 720 turns per direction and the highest being 3600 in each direction, assuming the original motor was at 5rpm.

4) The watch slots on the winding cups are too small to fit large bands and buckles, so owners of PAM watches should stay away from this one.

5) The controller board has an LED output but no LEDs were provided to indicate the winding status.

6) The viewing window was made from clear mica sheet and not acrylic or glass which was a real let down. Mica sheet is the cheap, thin cover found on a shirt packaging box or at the confectionary.

7) The motors were cheap toy motors with a plastic gearbox that wouldn’t last a few months.

8) I wouldn’t recommend this model even to my closest friend.

Labels: Watch Winder Repair

Repairing a Watch Winder

Labels: Watch Winder Repair