Better ceramic...

[SMD]

Here it is:

http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/introdu...etails-pricing

[grnman]

wow just showed my wife the white ceramic and she said its nice but I cant have one. Then I said its $20,000 so I couldn't anyway. She said oooh 20 well that's pretty good!!!

Good enabling guys

[csi-n]

Originally Posted by lapince

Sam google and you will find, sorry but I can't check today, read that 3 days ago on the net

Okay thanks Arnaud

Sam

[csi-n]

Originally Posted by SMD

Here it is:

http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/introdu...etails-pricing

SMD, thanks for the link.

As I had written previously, it's a surprise to me that the material scientists and the engineers were able to improve the hardness by 37%. That's pretty impressive and kudos to them. Of course, I am going to assume that this accomplishment had nothing, or little, to do with AP as their suppliers must have done this work.


Sam

[Mbbgysam]

Originally Posted by csi-n

SMD, thanks for the link.

As I had written previously, it's a surprise to me that the material scientists and the engineers were able to improve the hardness by 37%. That's pretty impressive and kudos to them. Of course, I am going to assume that this accomplishment had nothing, or little, to do with AP as their suppliers must have done this work.


Sam

Allow me to put my materials science hat on for a moment.

Hardness gives you a good indication of how difficult a material is to scratch. However, toughness (basically the amount of energy a material can handle before breaking) is equally important for a watch. Normally there are always tradeoffs in ceramics. It wouldn't surprise me if the white ceramic has a higher hardness at the cost of lower toughness. Yes, the white ceramic may be 37% harder than the black, but that doesn't make it a 37% better material overall.

I would agree that it's highly unlikely that AP is doing any ceramics research in house given how complicated ceramics processing is (trust me - I did it for years). There are armies of folks in labs around the world dedicated to materials research. Typically for ceramics, the two most important variables are (1) the chemical composition of the material itself - namely the "impurities" added to the core makeup, and (2) the manufacturing process - namely drying and sintering which impact grain size, structure, and orientation. Very minor tweaks to either of those two variables can cause huge variances in the chemical and physical properties of the resulting material.

I could go on for days, but, suffice it to say, I'm not even slightly surprised that the difference in hardness is 37% - the are different materials afterall. What would actually be quite shocking is if they were able to create a white ceramic with exactly the same chemical and physical properties as the black ceramic - now that would be a challenge!

[arnage]

Originally Posted by Mbbgysam

Allow me to put my materials science hat on for a moment.

Hardness gives you a good indication of how difficult a material is to scratch. However, toughness (basically the amount of energy a material can handle before breaking) is equally important for a watch. Normally there are always tradeoffs in ceramics. It wouldn't surprise me if the white ceramic has a higher hardness at the cost of lower toughness. Yes, the white ceramic may be 37% harder than the black, but that doesn't make it a 37% better material overall.

I would agree that it's highly unlikely that AP is doing any ceramics research in house given how complicated ceramics processing is (trust me - I did it for years). There are armies of folks in labs around the world dedicated to materials research. Typically for ceramics, the two most important variables are (1) the chemical composition of the material itself - namely the "impurities" added to the core makeup, and (2) the manufacturing process - namely drying and sintering which impact grain size, structure, and orientation. Very minor tweaks to either of those two variables can cause huge variances in the chemical and physical properties of the resulting material.

I could go on for days, but, suffice it to say, I'm not even slightly surprised that the difference in hardness is 37% - the are different materials afterall. What would actually be quite shocking is if they were able to create a white ceramic with exactly the same chemical and physical properties as the black ceramic - now that would be a challenge!

Thanks for the primer on this. Based on your experience, does it seem sensible to you that the basis of discontinuation for ceramic divers is related to how difficult it is to make the cases consistently? i.e. - the tolerance for QC is such that many cases that come out of the manufacturing process cannot be used, for instance?

a little curious about this, because I'm a bit doubtful the raw material itself is expensive (unlike a precious metals), but it's more that the process of manufacturing a finely finished watch with ceramic lends itself to a lot of time and wastage in this scenario -- which no one wants. if the tooling etc is already set up for the cases/bezels, why would they stop production so quickly?

[csi-n]

Originally Posted by Mbbgysam

Allow me to put my materials science hat on for a moment.

Hardness gives you a good indication of how difficult a material is to scratch. However, toughness (basically the amount of energy a material can handle before breaking) is equally important for a watch. Normally there are always tradeoffs in ceramics. It wouldn't surprise me if the white ceramic has a higher hardness at the cost of lower toughness. Yes, the white ceramic may be 37% harder than the black, but that doesn't make it a 37% better material overall.

I would agree that it's highly unlikely that AP is doing any ceramics research in house given how complicated ceramics processing is (trust me - I did it for years). There are armies of folks in labs around the world dedicated to materials research. Typically for ceramics, the two most important variables are (1) the chemical composition of the material itself - namely the "impurities" added to the core makeup, and (2) the manufacturing process - namely drying and sintering which impact grain size, structure, and orientation. Very minor tweaks to either of those two variables can cause huge variances in the chemical and physical properties of the resulting material.

I could go on for days, but, suffice it to say, I'm not even slightly surprised that the difference in hardness is 37% - the are different materials afterall. What would actually be quite shocking is if they were able to create a white ceramic with exactly the same chemical and physical properties as the black ceramic - now that would be a challenge!

Thank you for the informative response Kevin. If in fact toughness is compromised in order to improve the hardness, this may not afterall be impressive at all. As you indicated, hardness alone is no indication of the overall quality of the ceramic. It is a combination of many different properties and metrics that make any material suitable for any given application.


Sam

[yjfang]

The white ceramic looks like a matte finish and does not have the vertical lines that I love.

[VicLeChic]

Nice piece, although I don't believe in indestructible, just more resistant perhaps.

[Tomas Eriksson]

Sorry for bumping this thread but I have become a little obsessed with Audemars ceramic. Has anyone here come across chipped, scratched or in other way damaged ceramic ROO's?
I have found one report on TimeZone that seem to claim he scratched his ceramic bezel on a ROO Diver:
http://forums.timezone.com/index.php...=0#msg_6563751


If now 1350 vickers is the correct hardness for audemars black ceramic? From my research it seems that there are titanium pieces in roughly the same hardness. But as someone stated above, hardness is not the same thing as thoughness. Rado has released ceramic watches in the past that they claim have a hardness of 10 000 vickers. Is that kind of hardness more negative than benifitial?

I ultimately wan't to try to find out if my black AP ceramic Diver is scratchproof or not

[jem7v]

I'd prefer the black ceramic if it had a blue line instead of orange. I think with blue it would have been the best diver easily.

[AshAP]

My favourite AP Diver is the Bartorelli Scuba.

[AshAP]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[lapince]

Originally Posted by Tomas Eriksson

Sorry for bumping this thread but I have become a little obsessed with Audemars ceramic. Has anyone here come across chipped, scratched or in other way damaged ceramic ROO's?

My case cracked, no shock at all, but they told me i had fell, really can't see how that happened, but the SC fixed it with a new case under 2 months so that was fine

[jem7v]

Originally Posted by lapince

My case cracked, no shock at all, but they told me i had fell, really can't see how that happened, but the SC fixed it with a new case under 2 months so that was fine

Wait how did your case crack? You dropped it? How much did it cost for a new case?

[sssteel]

Originally Posted by jem7v

Wait how did your case crack? You dropped it? How much did it cost for a new case?

He didnt drop it - it just cracked.
And was fixed under warranty (ie. no charge/free.)

[Tomas Eriksson]

Originally Posted by lapince

My case cracked, no shock at all, but they told me i had fell, really can't see how that happened, but the SC fixed it with a new case under 2 months so that was fine

Interesting that they argued shock. Let's hope none of us will experience it outside of warranty.
You seem to have owned your a while, any swirls or hairlines? I just got my CE diver and it was unused.

[jem7v]

Originally Posted by sssteel

He didnt drop it - it just cracked.
And was fixed under warranty (ie. no charge/free.)

It just cracked? how? randomly the wind blew and it cracked lol? There must have been some impact on it I would imagine.

[sssteel]

Originally Posted by jem7v

It just cracked? how? randomly the wind blew and it cracked lol? There must have been some impact on it I would imagine.

Original thread, w photos:
http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=469424

Update:
http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=481559

[jem7v]

Originally Posted by sssteel

Original thread, w photos:
http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=469424

Update:
http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=481559

I see. I like the guy who says he hit the ceramic part of his diver on every hard surface imaginable and hasn't broken it yet.

It makes me wonder still why people say ceramic is brittle. Brittle in what regard? Brittle like if you take a hammer and hit it, then it will shatter whereas steel won't?

Or brittle that if I drop it on the floor it will crack in half, which I doubt because I've dropped my ceramic hublot once on the floor, and hit it against a glass table, both times nothing happened at all. Not even a single scratch on the bezel.

[SMD]

Had mine for three years now. No issues at all with scratches or cracks

[Mbbgysam]

Originally Posted by jem7v

I see. I like the guy who says he hit the ceramic part of his diver on every hard surface imaginable and hasn't broken it yet.

It makes me wonder still why people say ceramic is brittle. Brittle in what regard? Brittle like if you take a hammer and hit it, then it will shatter whereas steel won't?

Or brittle that if I drop it on the floor it will crack in half, which I doubt because I've dropped my ceramic hublot once on the floor, and hit it against a glass table, both times nothing happened at all. Not even a single scratch on the bezel.

It's the same in both cases. When energy is applied to a material (either by you hitting it with a hammer, or dropping it on the floor), that energy has to go somewhere. For a metal watch, the end result is often a ding caused by local "plastic" deformation of the metal as it absorbs the energy. Ceramics are often characterized as "brittle" because their molecular structures are held together by very strong bonds (much stronger than metallic bonds) that do not allow for the same type of "plastic" deformation -- hence why you see chips and fractures instead of dings in ceramics.

That said, each ceramic material has different properties, just as different metals behave differently. Some ceramics will survive dropping better than others. Your watch may have survived just fine, but imagine dropping a ceramic plate from the same height!

[jem7v]

Originally Posted by Mbbgysam

It's the same in both cases. When energy is applied to a material (either by you hitting it with a hammer, or dropping it on the floor), that energy has to go somewhere. For a metal watch, the end result is often a ding caused by local "plastic" deformation of the metal as it absorbs the energy. Ceramics are often characterized as "brittle" because their molecular structures are held together by very strong bonds (much stronger than metallic bonds) that do not allow for the same type of "plastic" deformation -- hence why you see chips and fractures instead of dings in ceramics.

That said, each ceramic material has different properties, just as different metals behave differently. Some ceramics will survive dropping better than others. Your watch may have survived just fine, but imagine dropping a ceramic plate from the same height!

So then does ceramic AP uses allow the watch to survive a fall without cracking? I mean on like a wood floor or maybe thin carpet. Not concrete. Same thing with scratches. Can I hit it against a glass table and be ok?

[lapince]

Originally Posted by Tomas Eriksson

Interesting that they argued shock. Let's hope none of us will experience it outside of warranty.
You seem to have owned your a while, any swirls or hairlines? I just got my CE diver and it was unused.

They didn't say anything and said they would give it to SC, but when I got it back I asked what was the reason, they said it seemed it was dropped, I did not drop it, and had I dropped it the crack would not have been where it was, I mean it was in the most protected place imaginable... Apart from that no, not a single hairline in about 2 or 3 years

Originally Posted by jem7v

It just cracked? how? randomly the wind blew and it cracked lol? There must have been some impact on it I would imagine.

Nope nothing except a crack between the crown guard and the rubber under the bezel, basically the part where if you would want to crack it you would need a chisel

[Tomas Eriksson]

Originally Posted by lapince

They didn't say anything and said they would give it to SC, but when I got it back I asked what was the reason, they said it seemed it was dropped, I did not drop it, and had I dropped it the crack would not have been where it was, I mean it was in the most protected place imaginable... Apart from that no, not a single hairline in about 2 or 3 years



Nope nothing except a crack between the crown guard and the rubber under the bezel, basically the part where if you would want to crack it you would need a chisel

Cheers, that is excellent. I have yet never got a ding on a piece but I tend get quite a few hairlines and light scratches on my pieces over time as I pretty much never leaves home without a time piece on my wrist. If it is possible to get a hairline I'm pretty sure I'm the man for the job, time will tell but your experience sounds very promising.

[benlee]

I personally find the white ceramic Diver hideous. As for indestructible, from what I understand, ceramic is harder to scratch, but more brittle on impact.