It is hard to believe that Rafael Nadal wears a tourbillon watch on court, but that is the genius of the alignment between the Spanish tennis supremo and Richard Mille, which makes the impact-resistant timepieces.
The partnership, which dates back to 2010, is hoping to build on that success with the RM 35-03 Automatic Rafael Nadal, the fourth collaboration piece in the collection.
It comes with a patented innovation, the butterfly rotor, which allows the watch’s winding mechanism to be adjusted by its wearer.
“Previously, any modification of the rotor’s geometry needed to be done by one of our licensed watchmakers. We have perfected this system and given wearers the possibility of directly acting on the watch’s winding speed,’ explains Salvador Arbona, technical director for movements at Richard Mille.
“It’s like a driver being able to adjust the transmission style from city use to racetrack by activating the sports mode,” he claims.
How winding a mainspring faster or slower affects performance of a watch in any way is unclear but it could protect the movement from over-winding during the intensity of a professional tennis match, which might justify the three years of development Richard Mille says the feature took to master.
Richard Mille’s engineers explains: “The butterfly rotor consists of two grade 5 titanium arms mounted with heavy metal weight segments, activated by a separate gear train via a dedicated push-piece. In their initial position, the weight segments create a radial displacement of the gravitational centre outward, converting the wearer’s every movement into the torque needed to rewind the barrel. Press the push-piece at 7 o’clock, however, and the rotor’s gears spread the two weights to a 180° angle. The gravitational centre is aligned and the rotor returns to a balanced position, suspending the winding process and thereby preventing excessive winding of the movement”.
It is more about emotion than practicality, the boffins seem to suggest. “In shifting between modes — from the normal mode that winds the barrel spring to the ‘sports mode’ that suspends the rotor’s activity — pressure on the push-piece prompts the function to deliver haptic feedback, allowing the wearer to actually feel the weight segments springing apart on their wrist,” they explain.
Richard Mille had already created a variable geometry rotor for its Calibre RMAL1, the butterfly rotor of the RM 35-03 allows the wearer to play with the oscillating weight to alter the movement’s winding speed.
The RM 35-03 is available in three versions: blue and white Quartz TPT, Carbone TPT and white Quartz TPT, and Carbone TPT.
