Richard miller created the ultimate wristwatch. Rafael Nadal wore his clothes in every race in the past eight years, yohan blake wore one of three medals in the 20 12 London Olympic Games, and felipe massa often wore RM- 1 on the wrist of F 1 racing cars, including the deadly high speed in the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix.
Clocks made by an independent Swiss watchmaker of the same name are not intended to be handled with children's gloves. They are not cheap either-the average price of Richard Mille's watches is $6.5438+5,000. Judging from the typical watch income ratio ($50 million+0 million per $654.38), the average annual income of RM customers is $30 million.
Richard Mille produced 4,600 pieces this year, and the goal for next year is to increase this number to 5,000 pieces.
We visited ProArt and Horometrie, two major manufacturing plants in Les Breuleux, Neuchatel, Switzerland, which are only a few minutes away from each other, to understand the significance of Richard Mille timepieces.
ProArt's huge ProArt factory covers an area of 32,000 square feet, mainly producing shells, but also providing tools for manufacturing other components, such as floors and bridges. All richard miller's watchcases, from impossibly bent barrels to large round watchcases, and even little-known square watchcases are produced here. The only exception is the sapphire case, which comes from an external supplier. This is because it takes about 45 days to make a sapphire case, and the manufacturing process is extremely complicated-only five or six cases are made every year, which also explains that Richard Mille of sapphire case can ask for $2 million.
We were taken into a spacious room, which was filled with the sweetness of industrial oil and the warmth of the most advanced CNC machine tools running 24 hours a day. There is no stamping process for making watch cases, which is the routine practice of many large watch manufacturers-here, each watch case is machined, cut with wire, completed with high-pressure nozzle, checked with precision tools of microscope, and of course, passed through several pairs of professionally trained eyes and hands. A situation like RM 032 requires as many as 830 processes.
The manufacturing accuracy of these parts is incredible. We were told that the error range of the machines that cut these shells and parts is only plus or minus 2 microns-the average diameter of blood cells is 5 microns.
About 99.5% of Richard Mille's watches are made in Switzerland, but some crowns and buttons are purchased from outside, with the following exceptions.
Mille is not only an innovator in design, but also a real material innovator. We walked to the table, and there were some prototype boxes on the table for us to check. Richard Mille cooperates with North Thin Ply Technology in Lausanne, which specializes in producing ultra-light materials. NTPT carbon fiber is the material used on the mast of Alingi ship participating in the America's Cup regatta.
This material contains about 600-800 layers of carbon, which are compressed together at high temperature and high pressure to form a block, and then cut into a watch case. Colored epoxy resin can be injected into carbon TPT and timely TPT layers to produce a shell similar to RM 27-03, which is a combination of yellow and red. The carbon box is hard. In order to cut them, the diamond tools in CNC machine tools must be replaced every 20 boxes because of wear.
To the 9000 kg milling machine. It contains 65,438+0,000 liters of engine oil and is aimed at the case at a pressure of 20 bar, which is the same as that of the Geneva jet, which ejects 65,438+040 meters of water from the surface of Lake Geneva.
There is a team nearby to check whether there are aesthetic defects in each manufactured case, while in another adjacent room, a large Zeiss automatic machine touches the case of each watch hundreds of times with exquisite needle probes and makes accurate measurements to check whether the case is cut perfectly.
A much smaller room downstairs is our next place, where they make some smaller parts, such as screws. Next, we went to a watch factory nearby.
Who's richard miller? Miller was born in Guignan in the southeast of France, studied marketing, and then went on to hold the highest position of Seiko and French luxury brand Mauboussin, leading the watchmaking department of the brand, which brought him into direct contact with companies such as Airbno &Papi. Swiss parts manufacturer.
One day, he found himself hardly in the hotel room. He was idle in the bathroom, which was an extraordinary moment. At that time, he scrubbed and carved a barrel-shaped watch case with soap, which was the prototype of his first watch RM 00 1.
Richard miller
When we entered the top floor of the two-story structure, we passed the scale model of Formula One racing cars and Airbus business jets-F1The materials used in racing cars and airplanes are often used in RM watches.
1999, most other people who are only 50 years old treat nursing homes equally. Miller quit his job, decided to go on strike as an entrepreneur, and set up his own brand of the same name, which is headquartered in Paris but makes watches in Paris. Switzerland. At 200 1, he introduced RM00 1. Equipped with the world's first torque indicator, titanium bridge and unique case shape, it became the cornerstone of Richard Mille's timepiece. Its price is $654.38+$3500, which is not a small sum for a new product, and it is nothing for many Swiss watchmakers to overestimate the theme lineage. However, the first batch of 65,438+07 watches he made with this series were sent to Chronopassion store in Paris and sold out within 30 minutes after arrival.
Nowadays, the average price of RM150,000 dollars is not only futile marketing, but also because Mille gave his R&D team a blank check when researching and using the best materials that have never been used in business.
Photo: In the past eight years, Rafael Nadal has performed well in every game.
Taking RM 009, which debuted in 2005, as an example, the brand began to pursue ultra-lightweight watches. It is made of a compound called Alusic and used in satellites. Aluminum alloy is a material formed by rotating aluminum and silicon in a centrifuge until particles are combined in a molecular way. To prove that the most expensive thing in the world at that time was indestructible. The aluminum-lithium movement developed by Giulio Papi was added to the watch to make it ultra-light. The finished product is less than 30 grams without belt. Limited to 25 pieces, the king of Spain wore one.
Photo: Ruichi McGrady RM 50-03 Tourbillion Two-second Timed Ultra-light McLaren F 1
Then in 20 10, RM 027 tourbillon Rafael Nadal became the lightest mechanical watch in the world, and it was also equipped with tourbillon. The whole movement, including clockwork, train and tourbillon, weighs only 3.8 grams-peanuts weigh 3 grams on average. The carbon nanofibers used to construct the watchcase are the same as those used in the F- 1 17 stealth fighter of the US Air Force, which can make radar waves pass through and thus avoid radar detection. The finished watch with strap weighs only 20 grams.
The material innovation and the pursuit of lighter and more durable sports watches did not stop there, but continued last year's RM 50-03 tourbillon two-second chronograph ultra-light McLaren F 1, which used a carbon-based material made of graphene, which was discovered by two scientists in the university. In 2004, he received his Ph.D. from Manchester University and later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. 50-03 weighs only 40 grams, including the strap. It is the lightest second hand chronograph in the world.
Horometrie Horometrie is a joint venture between Richard Mille and his friend Dominique Guenat, a watchmaking company with a history of 1 18. In the reception area, the names of two companies are written on a sign. Richard miller mainly relies on Audemars Piguet Renault, Pappy and Walcher to make the movement. APRP powers all Richard Mille's tourbillon movements, while Vaucher powers most of RM's automatic chronograph movements.
On the first floor of Horometrie, we have to wear lab clothes, shoes and gloves before we can enter a sterile environment. In this environment, the movements provided by APRP and Walker are assembled into RM luggage. Our guide explained that this layer has four stages, namely T0, T 1, T2 and T3.
T0 is the pre-installed part of the watch case, T 1 is the component of the movement, T2 is the shell of the movement, and T3 is the fixing of the watch band on the watch case.
On this floor, each watchmaker gets 10 movements at a time, and the assembly is expected to be completed within two weeks. After that, it will be sent to the quality control department, and it will take another two weeks to strictly check its accuracy, and then it will be transferred to another person, and the watch will be packaged into 10 sets in four or five days.
However, tourbillon's desk is on this floor, which is the most sacred desk, located in a corner of the room.
This is a high table that only assembles the facilities in tourbillon, and there are three permanent tourbillon watch experts sitting in it.
Tourbillon is one of the most technologically advanced and complicated movements of this brand. Just like the AMG movement, tourbillon showed it to everyone, from T0 to T3.
It takes six weeks to assemble a tourbillon movement, then three weeks to test it, then run it to see if it works properly, then disassemble it, reassemble it (make sure it is not damaged), and finally pack it.
A typical tourbillon watch takes three months from beginning to end, while the RM 039 tourbillon Airlines E6-B flyback chronograph has 65,438+0,000 parts. Imagine having to reassemble it twice, and you will begin to understand why a watch like RM 039 costs 165438+ million dollars.
Through a series of corridors, we arrived at the technical office in Richard Mille, and a team composed of 1 1 was studying the design of the internal movement. In the past few years, richard miller has increasingly designed its own movements, rather than relying solely on APRP and Walker to design and manufacture them. They now have eight internal movements.
Photo: Ruichi McGrady RM 25-01Tour Billion Adventure Sylvester Stallone
Model 3266 is the first movement designed by Richard Mille for this family. It developed for three years and didn't come out until seven years ago. Since then, RM has released about one internally designed movement every year. The latest one is Calibrecrmt1,the brand's first internally designed automatic tourbillon movement, which was discovered in RM 7 1-0 1 released earlier this year.
After more corridors, we were taken to a room, and RM watches from all over the world were sent for repair-especially when local watchmakers in regional boutiques could not repair them.
The person in charge of the department explained that the first thing they should do after receiving the watch is to test the waterproof performance, and then check the list of steps for cleaning the movement, changing the oil, fixing the crystal, polishing the case and leaving the case. The viewing effect is much better than what they received.
Finally, we went directly to the bottom of this room, where some sports watches of this brand were subjected to cruel physical stress tests. Here is a high-meter pendulum testing device, which is characterized in that the manually swinging hammer pendulum points to a fully loaded watch installed at the bottom of the device. Through this test, the maximum weight that a watch such as RM 27-03 Rafael Nadal can bear is10000g, that is, a force of10kg per kilogram of clock.
The hammer landed on the watch case. Then take the watch out of the flying net and put it in, so that the hammer is next to the crown and then placed on the crystal. It needs to withstand all these tests before it can be officially certified and can withstand 10000 grams.
Richard miller doesn't care what his competitors are doing, but in other ways.
From the perspective of the whole watchmaking industry, few watchmaking brands make all the watch parts themselves. RICHARD MILLE attached great importance to the research and development of the movement, and set up a special component department as early as 20 13. Through independent research and development, cooperation with suppliers, etc., it is enough to manufacture a self-made movement, complete internal processing and test it with specific standards. At present, many homemade movements have been introduced, such as CRMA 1, CRMT 1.