TAG Heuer's radical new V4 watch movement

Having pushed quartz movement technology to the extreme edge of performance, TAG Heuer has turned its engineering and design prowess to the mechanical movement.

Despite the many revolutions that have occurred at the heart of timekeeping, little has changed in the heart of the mechanical movement and the traditional contrivance of a kinetic chain of pinions still rules the day.

With the Monaco V4 Concept Watch, TAG Heuer designers have once again broken with tradition in several key areas. TAG Heuer's best engineers and watchmakers, working with the inventor and designer Jean-François Ruchonnet, began delving into the fundamental concepts of mechanical watch movement two years ago, under the strictest terms of confidentiality. What began as an idea and a blank piece of paper is now the Monaco V4 Concept Watch, which can be admired for the first time at Basel Fair 2004. The components and bottomplate of the V4 were engineered and machined at the TAG Heuer workshop in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, then assembled and finished by a famous Swiss master watchmaker. The name V4 derives from the movement's four barrels, which are mounted on a V-shaped main plate angled at 15 degrees, like cylinders in a high-end motor racing engine. It also pays tribute to the movement's inspiration: while the V4 draws from the newest concepts in industrial technology, its true muse is the world of high-tech, high-performance racecar engines. A Revolutionary Mechanical Movement

Like a car engine, the fundamental mechanical dynamics operating upon a watch are: transmission, friction, torque and power. Working from this parallel, TAG Heuer's team of designers, watchmakers and engineers hit upon three paradigm-shifting responses to the traditional dictates of watchmaking.

These traditions dictate, for example, that a movement's power must be transmitted by wheels; that rotating axes need to have synthetic rubies as bearings; and that an oscillating weight rotating on its own axis provides a movement's spring barrels with energy. None of these hold true in the new V4 watch movement.

Dictate N° 1: The only possibility for transmission is pinions

In response, TAG Heuer has invented the first patented drive-belt transmission in a watch movement. The V4 Movement replaces the pinions of the traditional mechanical movement with a relay of 13 drive belts whose tension is controlled by turnbuckles and whose gauge measures a slender 0.5x 0.45 mm. Linking and turning two axes in the same direction by the use of a belt is much more efficient than by means of an intermediate wheel. This revolutionary concept, the use of belts in a watch movement, is the object of a TAG Heuer worldwide patent.

Dictate N° 2: Oscillating mass is always rotating

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