Drive de WSNM0005 replica

The ethereal Rotonde de Cartier mystery watch takes viewers’ breath away with its psychedelic view of the hands floating in the air. The extremely simple design often makes people forget that its mysterious and magical way of showing the time actually comes from the complex structure of the clock. In fact, to perfect this new Cartier movement, Cartier’s master watchmakers revisited classical mechanics, aiming to overcome a series of technical challenges caused by the drive of large sapphire crystal discs. It is also a contradiction that needs to be resolved by similar mechanisms, not only to fully showcase the excellence of the timepiece but also to hide the complex watchmaking structure developed after hundreds of hours of measurement.

To create a mysterious watch, Cartier’s master watchmakers must do everything they can to overcome all inherent limitations and make the barely noticeable connection between the hands and the movement perfect. To reduce friction between the sapphire crystal discs, the watchmakers decided to rotate them around a fine shaft, similar to wheels, rather than the traditional way in which mystery clocks usually move through guide troughs.

This new construction idea, combined with the analogue wheel, avoids friction and reduces the energy used by the movement. When the friction is minimized, the inertia of these large sapphire crystal discs, weighing a total of 0.56 grams, needs to be optimized using a gear unit made with Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE).