VIDEKA

the watch

this is a translucent amber, geneva "jump hour" watch, hand crafted from urethane resin, in an art deco style. new age material meets vintage design.

the case

made of an amber tinted urethane resin, the case is formed by hand reaction injecting resin into our custom made molds. the resin is then solidified under 60 psi of pressure before being removed and baked for 6 hours to complete the cure. this is all done by hand in Denver, CO where the dry climate helps ensure a lower ambient humidity that is ideal for the urethane curing process.

the geneva drive

the two wheels you see are something called a geneva drive. the bottom wheel displaying the minutes uses an 18-8 stainless steel captive pin to turn the hour wheel once every hour. the hour wheel uses a micro ball-bearing to reduce friction of the rotation. because of the geneva drive design, there is a 15 minute transition between hours. this mechanism was selected to run the "jump hour" mechanism because of its durability and simplified design.

case + complication

the top wheel of the geneva drive, is mounted to the watch case via a micro bearing and a handcut brass insert that was formed to the case during the injection molding process. with half of the geneva drive mechanism mounted to the case; making the case in a way part of the complication. this also helps slim down the watch to 12.6mm in thickness. horologically absurd? probably. fun and weird? absolutely.

fused nylon - pa 11

the caseback, case guard, and crown cover are all made of 3d printed nylon. this particular nylon (pa 11) was used because it's a high performance, bio-based material made from castor oil which is supposedly, vegetable oil. and is skin-safe. this material starts as a sugar coated gray but is dyed black to ensure consistent color between parts.

movement

the miyota 9039 movement powers the geneva drive. it's been modified to remove the hour wheel, to attach the digital minutes disk to the canon pinion. the movement's reliability, the finishing of the rotor, and the thinness of the movement were all great reasons to pick it. in addition, 9-series miyota movements can be found in great jump hour and digital display watches produced by other makers.

this watch is the culmination of 7 months of relentless testing and engineering. components were stress tested, redesigned, reordered, and repeated well over a dozen times. I managed to keep the following 12 sets of prototypes out of the 14+ made. each photo is captioned with what was being tested for the given iteration.

r&d timeline