Just a short one today, the service of this Seiko kinetic. Matt sent me two watches, this Seiko and a vintage Omega, which will feature as the next post on the blog. This is actually a movement exchange in reality as opposed to a service, meaning the whole movement will be replaced with a new one.
So why replace the whole movement? It purely comes down to it being more economical, as is often the case with quartz movements. A large majority of the major brands will exchange your movement if its quartz, some even exchange the mechanical movements! It would cost more in my time to service this movement than the cost of simply buying a new one and installing that.
I remove the case back, the kinetic movements work differently than a standard quartz. In a quartz movement, the power comes from the battery, once the power is drained the watch stops and the battery needs replacing. The kinetic has a capacitor (basically a rechargeable battery), and the wearers movement charges this, as opposed to a spring being wound in a mechanical movement. You can see the rotor in the below picture, very similar to that used in a mechanical watch.
Dial and hands removed, and thats where it ends for the old movement.
Dial, hour and minute hand installed onto the new movement.
Once the movement is re fitted to the case, I charge the watch on the auto winder.
The watch will then be tested over a number of days to ensure it holds charge and keeps time, before being returned to the customer.
Like I said, just a short post today – as no work is actually performed on the movement itself, its isn’t particularly involved.
Thanks for reading,
The Watch Professional
Leave a Reply