With the official start of the 114th French Open at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, the next two weeks will be hot for all tennis fans.
On the occasion of the opening of the top tennis tournament held on the clay court, the latest timepieces created by Richard Mille for friend and ambassador Rafael Nadal were also displayed.
The new Richard Mille Tourbillon RM 27-02 Rafael Nadal introduced the first hollow one-piece soleplate, in which the case and soleplate have been integrated into a whole without the need to connect the two components together.
This structure inspired by the racing chassis significantly improves rigidity and impact resistance. Manufacturing such a one-piece substrate requires a wealth of knowledge and experience in micromachining new materials, and Richard Mille is undoubtedly a pioneer in this field.
This special base plate is processed in ProArt, an ultra-modern factory opened by Richard Mille in 2013 to produce watch cases and other precious metals, titanium and composite parts. replica swiss watches
The soleplate supports a unique 3D structure, finishes (beveled, sandblasted and hand satin-finished), and bridges of titanium and carbon components.
These bridges support the complex hand-wound tourbillon movement, vibrate 21,600 times per hour, and provide 70 hours of constant power through a rapidly rotating barrel (6 hours per revolution instead of 7.5 hours). The barrel pawl with progressive recoil allows a 20% winding gain, especially at the beginning of the winding, which helps to evenly distribute the internal tension of the mainspring.
The case (47.77 x 39.70 x 12.25 mm) of the new Tourbillon RM 27-02 Rafael Nadal is also innovative. Through cooperation with long-term partner North Thin Ply Technology, Richard Mille engineers developed TPT quartz, a new material composed of hundreds of layers of quartz filaments stacked on top of each other.
These fibers have strong high temperature resistance, and have extremely high strength and transparency to electromagnetic waves. With a thickness of no more than 45 microns, these silica layers are inserted between the NTPT carbon layers by an automatic positioning system, which changes the fiber direction between each layer by 45°. It is heated to 120°C in an autoclave similar to that used to make aerospace parts, and the material is then ready to be processed in ProArt. At this stage, the layers of TPT quartz and NTPT carbon are randomly exposed to ensure that each machined part is as unique as the center of the bottom plate processed by the same process.
The NTPT carbon fiber/TPT quartz bezel and solid case back are connected to the one-piece base plate using 12 grade 5 titanium spline screws.
Both sides of the sapphire crystal mirror are treated with anti-glare, allowing the wearer to fully appreciate the details of the movement. The exact weight of the RM 27-02 has not been announced, but we know that it is a bit heavier than the RM 27-01 because the new model uses sapphire glass. The RM 27-01 weighs only 19 grams.