It is not too late to get to the topic. Not long ago, some players raised the issue of low winding efficiency of ETA2892 in the forum, and conducted an ‘experiment’ with their watch. Through ‘experiment’, it was verified that without the manual chain refill, the watch was automatically wound by itself. Often in a state of not being full. Not as efficient as other automatic movements.
Although I have two watches using ETA2892, including a Portofino. However, because Portofino is an ordinary crown, not a lock handle, when it is idle, it is often twisted a few times, so it has never felt insufficient power or stopped after a night (a watch with a lock handle, too lazy to manually repair the chain) . On the contrary, my friend once complained that his Cartier was not motivated, and occasionally stopped after a short sleep. In view of these situations, I have also read the experience of some domestic and foreign players. And what I want to do today is to tell you what I know so far. Why is the winding efficiency of the 2892 not as good as that of the 2824 and other movements? What is the difference between 2892 and 2824?
ETA2892 (top) and ETA2824 (bottom)
First of all, let me tell you the conclusion. The low winding efficiency of the 2892 is a fact. This is caused by the movement structure of the 2892.
ETA2892 is a ‘great’ movement. Not only sturdy and durable, but also very thin. Someone once thought that the best self-winding movements in the watch industry were the Rolex 3135 and ETA2892. The two movements performed better than the 2892, because the Rolex 3135 had a thickness of 6 mm, and the 2892 movement only The 3.6mm ultra-thin thickness takes into account both automatic winding and performance. From this perspective, the Rolex 3135 is indeed inferior. As a general-purpose movement, ETA2892 has covered the market of watches ranging from thousands to 100,000 yuan. The reason is that 2892 is rugged, automatic, ultra-thin, and easy to add modules (because it is thin). However, Cheng He also defeated Xiao He. Behind these advantages, he also laid some ‘hidden dangers’ for 2892.
ETA2892’s automatic winding mechanism is integrated in the travel time train. At the same time, we can see that 2892 is a partial two-wheel layout.
As we can see, 2892 is the thinnest of the self-winding movements common to mainstream brands. 2824 is 4.6 mm, Omega 8500 is 5.5 mm, and Rolex 3135 is 6 mm. The 2892 is the thinnest because the 2892 has deliberately adopted a number of designs to install the automatic winding mechanism inside the movement. Both 2892 and 2824 seem to be self-winding movements, but they are actually completely different constructions. 2824 is the automatic winding mechanism superimposed on the basic movement (this is why 2824 has a manual winding model 2801, 2892 does not have a manual model.), 2892 is an automatic winding mechanism implanted inside the movement. The 2892 reduced the size of the movement’s drive train to provide space for the automatic winding mechanism, and integrated the automatic winding mechanism and the travelling gear train. Therefore, the volume of the automatic winding section of the 2892 is smaller than that of the 2824, and the size of the ball bearing is also small. In addition, in order to control the thickness of the movement, the 2892 made the automatic rotor very thin, which further exacerbated the drop in winding efficiency. Therefore, many brands using the 2892 movement, the first thing to get the 2892 is to change the automatic top, increasing the winding efficiency of the 2892.
The ETA2892’s automatic top and self-winding part, the 2892’s automatic top is very thin, which is one of the reasons for the low winding efficiency.
In addition to winding efficiency, I also learned about another technical issue of the 2892. Frequent manual winding will cause problems with the clutch of the reversing gear in the automatic winding mechanism, which will cause the automatic rotor to rotate when winding manually. I have encountered this problem on other watch movements before. It was Girard Perregaux’s GP3300 movement, and the problem I saw at the time was also that the automatic rotor followed when it was wound manually. It should be noted that some people have also proposed that the ETA2824 movement also has a manual winding problem. The problem with 2824 is that frequent manual winding will cause bearing wear, and frequent manual winding will cause manual winding function to fail. Regarding the damage caused by frequent manual winding of 2892 and 2824, I suddenly remembered that the manual of a certain brand of watch (seemingly Breitling), which roughly means not to manually wind the automatic movement or reduce the manual winding. of. But on this issue, I don’t think it needs to be so tangled. As we often hear, driving and killing the steering wheel destroys the car, and speeding down to destroy the car. So if the basement is parked, does the car need to be carried into the parking space without being killed? Do you also need to lift the car when you see the speed bump? So let it be. I used a 2892 watch for a long time, manually winding it every day, everything was normal.
The automatic winding mechanism of the ETA2824 is installed on the basic movement, so the 2824 is relatively thick, and at the same time we can see the manually wound version of the 2824 (top) 2801 (bottom).
In terms of movement level, we know that ETA2892, 2824 includes Standard, Elaboré, Top, and Chronometer. Each level of the movement configuration is different, the travel time accuracy is different.
Standard: Etachocs (three-lobed) suspension, two-way tuning, error +/- 12 seconds, Nivaflex NO material clockwork.
Improved Elaboré: Etachocs (three-lobed) suspension, three-way tuning, error +/- 7 seconds, Nivaflex NO material clockwork
Top: Incabloc shock absorber, five-way tuning, error -4 / + 10 seconds, Nivaflex NM material clockwork.
Chronometer observatory level: Incabloc shock absorber, five-way tuning, error -4 / + 6 seconds, Nivaflex NM material clockwork.
Clockwork of the 2892 movement.
The above data, many players know, I want to use this to explain two details that were rarely mentioned before. We once used shock absorbers as a way to judge the authenticity of using ETA movement watches. Because the original Swiss watches use Incabloc shock absorbers, the use of domestic movements are all three-cylinder shock absorbers. The current situation is that some brands of original Swiss watches use Standard and Elaboré improved movements. These two movements are equipped with Etachocs (three-lobed) shock absorbers, so the shock absorbers are no longer It is an intuitive method that can be used to identify the ‘true’ of the movement, please pay attention to it. The second detail is that it was also mentioned before that different grades of ETA movements use different spring materials. The lower grade is Nivaflex NO and the higher grade is Nivaflex NM. Made of nickel, 18% chromium, 5% iron, 4% tungsten, 4% molybdenum, 1% titanium, but there is a 2% alloy composition difference between the two. This 2% difference makes the two levels of springs Performance is different.
Even under the ETA movement classification, the 2892 will use higher materials and configurations than the 2824 grade. The most obvious performance is that the low-level Etachocs shock absorber has never been used on the 2892 movement. But we must also see that the automatic winding part of the 2824 movement, especially the ball bearing of the 2824, has better support capabilities. Some foreign players have directly pointed out that the automatic winding part of the 2824 has better shock resistance.