Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat: Mechanical Compilation To The Excessive (Plus Video)

Ready might be nobody’s favourite exercise, but all of us should do it. It is available in all kinds all through the day – and our lives – in drastically totally different intervals. Within the morning, it may very well be ready for our toast to get golden brown (time: 3.5 minutes). It may very well be ready for a dinner date set for the tip of the week (time: 5-7 days).

It may very well be ready for the following season of your favourite faculty soccer group to begin (time: 7 months, 3 weeks, and 4 days). Maybe you might have been ready for the sequel to your favourite 2009 film Avatar to hit theaters (time: 13 years, possibly). Or it may very well be so simple as ready for the sunshine to show inexperienced whereas sitting in visitors (time: 120 seconds or much less).

However nothing compares to the eternity you expertise after you say the phrases “I like you” for the primary time in a relationship. It might take solely a second or two, however earlier than you already know if they’ll say it again you’re frozen in time, and it looks like ceaselessly till they begin to communicate. It seems Einstein was proper: time is actually relative.

So it comes as no shock that typically it will possibly really feel like you’re ready ages for a brand new watch to return out after getting a sneak peak of an unfinished prototype with no stable launch date but.

This doesn’t occur on a regular basis, and I depend myself fortunate that I get to see backstage typically, however it will possibly appear as if a lot time goes by whereas I patiently look ahead to that basically superior watch to seem and I can lastly nerd out about it.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat on the wrist

My most up-to-date expertise with this was with the Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat, a implausible new mechanical smorgasbord introducing an evolution of the boutique model’s developments mixed collectively, therefore the German identify Aggregat (“mixture”).

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat lumed up

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat

The UR-112 Aggregat is a watch you can say was 25 years within the making because it incorporates options, designs, and mechanics from throughout the historical past of Urwerk’s releases. It leans way more into the later years of Urwerk and aesthetically follows the lead of the UR-111C, which itself builds on the 2008 launch of the UR-CC1. Mechanically, nevertheless, it’s a mashup of concepts pulled from a number of fashions that mixed to create new shows and an especially difficult motion design.

The hours and minutes are displayed on the fore fringe of the watch by way of rotating triangular prisms harking back to the early UR-202 and Opus 5. The hours are leaping, set on the 4 left indicators that cycle thrice each 12 hours. The minutes on the best energy the hour bounce and use the identical biking set of indicator prisms. Nonetheless, these run repeatedly and are marked in five-minute intervals. Every quantity passes by a scale to point out the passage of 5 particular person minutes till the following prism begins once more.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat with cowl open

The seconds are displayed repeatedly and in increments of 5 as properly, although this indication is hidden below a hunter-style cowl, one thing seen on earlier fashions of Urwerk’s historical past. These seconds relaxation below a magnifying crystal reverse the facility reserve above the hour indicators. The watch is break up down the center with a central ridge bisecting the show; that is truly the place the case screws collectively, altering how we’d take into consideration case development.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat with hunter cowl open

The hunter cowl is opened by activating two pushers on the aspect of the case, and winding and time setting is finished by way of a big crown on the best aspect of the case protruding from the titanium physique. The textile strap is secured by way of T-bar-style attachments that stretch off the central ridge, one thing seen on the UR-111C and functionally much like how most of the model’s straps are connected.

The Aggregat is certainly totally different than something that has come from Urwerk earlier than but it feels extraordinarily acquainted.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat on the wrist

Mechanics and elegance

The very first thing that turns into clear to the longtime Urwerk aficionado is that a lot of what’s on this motion has been preceded by options on different fashions, however typically in an structure that’s essentially totally different. The UR-110 is essentially the most functionally related mechanism to the hour and minute planetary gear indication on the brand new UR-112, however within the Aggregat it’s turned on its aspect and skim in a distinct orientation.

Again of the Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat with lume glowing

The speculation behind the 2 mechanisms is considerably related however fully totally different in apply. The rotating prisms are a transparent derivation from the many years of rotating cubes on the likes of the UR-110, UR-202, UR-210, UR-220, UR-1001, and Opus 5. However whereas these had 4 numbers per dice and three biking cubes, the triangular prisms listed below are three-sided and use 4 prisms extra akin to the UR-100, UR-103, UR-105, and UR-106 Lotus, which use 4 flatter disks that rotate thrice.

What’s extra, most of those mechanisms use a easy pin and Geneva cross to advance the cubes or disks, however the UR-112 makes use of planetary gears to maintain the prisms aligned as they rotate previous the window, then advancing the prisms individually.

The one items that use an identical planetary gear system to keep up alignment is the UR-110 and the T8, making this solely the third occasion of that within the hour show and by no means has it been used for the minutes like it’s right here. This brings me to the leaping show, one thing seen in a handful of locations however by no means like this. Within the UR-210/220, 1001, and Opus 5 a retrograde pointer follows the hour indication, whereas on the UR-CC1 and 111C we now have a type of linear minutes indication that additionally retrogrades to zero on the finish of every hour.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat

On the CC1 and 111C the minutes do certainly advance the hour indication with a bounce, the closest proximity to the Aggregat, however the UR-112 Aggregat jumps all the planetary gear system with every hour, essentially the most difficult bounce the model has made but. On prime of that, the UR-112 has some new methods up its sleeve.

Structure and new parts and mechanisms

The development of such a mechanism required some new types of parts that Urwerk has by no means used earlier than, the prisms on a planetary gear system being a giant one. However getting the facility from the principle a part of the motion all the best way to the entrance, the place the cantilevered hour and minute shows are situated, required a really lengthy driveshaft. This shaft is hidden within the ridge of the case however interprets the horizontal rotation of the motion into perpendicular rotation aligned with the case. It then interprets that movement round one other 90-degree flip to drive the hour and minute shows which can be perpendicular to the motion aligned with the crown.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat motion

The drive shaft options two bevel gears on every finish, and since it adjustments rotation route twice the system needed to be designed with further energy to beat the torque loss. Whereas that’s sadly hidden, what it drives shouldn’t be hidden thanks to 2 giant sapphire cylinders fully surrounding the indications. These crystals are protected with extensions to the titanium case, however they absolutely encase the cantilevered mechanisms to offer an unbelievable view into the motion.

The Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat motion  in an exploded view

That meeting methodology has by no means been seen earlier than on an Urwerk and solely has a number of corollaries in all the business. It additionally permits the entrance of the Aggregat to really feel way more like a spaceship (or submarine or Artwork Deco tank), which, at this level, is precisely the purpose that Urwerk is clearly going for with the aesthetic route. One foremost repurposed architectural characteristic is the hunter style-cover, and I like how such a basic and historic concept can really feel proper at dwelling on such a futuristic piece.

There may be nothing about it that feels misplaced, and it makes whole sense for the aesthetic route and for increasing the tactile expertise of the watch. The identify that Urwerk selected for the UR-112 Aggregat is clearly the proper selection: “an entire fashioned by combining a number of (sometimes disparate) parts” applies in each method to this piece.

Nobody might say it doesn’t match completely throughout the Urwerk steady of watches, and but you can’t say it has a transparent predecessor. It’s actually a mixture, an mixture of what has come earlier than with a handful of recent concepts thrown in. That is why once I first noticed the motion throughout Geneva Watch Days 2021 I used to be so extremely excited and why ready for it to be launched and see its remaining kind felt prefer it took ceaselessly.

Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat with cowl open

The wait was clearly value it as there is just one factor I might change about this watch: its worth. Unsurprisingly, it’s properly outdoors of my price range at CHF 250,000, to not point out it’s restricted to 25 items, so the prospect to even see one is uncommon.

I’ll nonetheless depend it as a win and lengthy for it till the tip of my days, or till Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei resolve I ought to work for them and I can scrabble one collectively from spare elements!

Till then I’ll simply concentrate on breaking this one down for you!

• Wowza Issue * 9.95 Urwerk is all the time on the highest of my checklist, and that is excessive on my checklist of Urwerk. Simply wow!
• Late Night time Lust Attraction * 99.5» 975.762m/s2 Two cantilevered planetary gear programs with bounce hours and hidden indications? Sure, please!
• M.G.R. * 71 It’s stuff like this that received me into watches method again to start with, and that is practically excellent within the capacity to geek out about it. Merely wonderful motion!
• Added-Functionitis * Gentle An influence reserve, the quintessential added operate for manually wound watches, but it nonetheless solely requires kids’s power Gotta-HAVE-That cream!
• Ouch Define * 13 Stepping on Legos in the course of the evening! Heck, let’s be actual: I might run on a treadmill of Legos barefoot if it meant getting this watch on my wrist!!
• Mermaid Second * What a show! I can’t assist however be head over heels for a show and mechanism like that; Urwerk will get me each time!
• Superior Complete * 754.58 Begin with the width in millimeters (42) and add the thickness in millimeters (16), then multiply by the caliber quantity (13.01) and the result’s a drool inducing superior whole!

For extra data, please go to www.urwerk.com/collections/ur-special-projects/ur-112.

Fast Information Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat
Case: 42 x 51 x 16 mm, titanium
Motion: handbook wound Caliber UR-13.01, 48-hour energy reserve, 28,800 vph/4 Hz frequency
Capabilities: digital leaping hours, digital minutes, digital seconds; energy reserve
Limitation: 25 items
Worth: CHF 250,000

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