Regulator Adjustment

[steveorval]

hi guys, got two probs on two watches that i hope someone can help me with, on one i can adjust it and it will lose a minute a day which is ok i can live with that but what puzzles me is that the ampltude is about 160 and b.e. is about 6, if i adjust it to run slower i can get amp of 240 and 0.2 b.e.but it will lose about 20 mins a day why is this, it has no b.e. adjustment on the regulator. the other prob on the other watch which i have now managed to adjust after a lot of hair tugging is i adjusted the b.e. to 0 the adjusted the reg but then the b.e. goes all out and took me ages to reach some kind of compromise i wondered if there is a method of doing this or if someone can share their method, i wondered why the b.e. should go out when you adjust the reg when all you are doing is adjusting the length of the spring, hope this dont lead into quantum physics, thanks for any help, steve

[Marc]

I think that the first thing that I would look at in both cases is the hair spring geometry.

 

Is the hair spring flat and correctly centered?

 

Is the form of the terminal curve circular around the balance axis or is it spiraled?

Does the hair spring sit centrally between the regulator curb pins throughout the arc described by the regulator adjustment?

Is the gap between the cub pins correct?

 

If adjusting the regulator results in changes in the beat error that suggests that either the terminal curve isn't circular or the hair spring coils aren't  properly concentric. When this is the case, moving the regulator pushes the hair spring side ways which can alter the resting position of the balance and thus beat error.

 

Incorrect regulator curb pin spacing and non-parallel curb pins can be a source of rate variation between the vertical positions which can also be affected by the hair spring not being properly centered between the pins.

[cdjswiss]

Marc
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Posted 22 April 2015 - 10:44 PM

cdjswiss, on 22 Apr 2015 - 7:43 PM, said:

Splitting hairs, I have a remark on this excellent new video.

My attempts at setting beat with the stud movement puts the watch out of time. So I readjust the curb pin setting using the timing regulator and this invariably results in a new, but smaller, beat error. After some iterations I can usually arrive at a watch in beat to within a few tenths of a ms and timing good to second/day. But it always needs three or more iterations. Is this normal?

I think I'm right in saying that if the hair spring coils are properly concentric and the terminal curve (the bit that goes through the arc made by the regulator curb pins) is circular rather than spiral, the moving the regulator shouldn't introduce any beat error.

If the regulator curb pins impinge on the spiral part of the hair spring, or if the terminal arc of the spring is not circular, then as you move the regulator the curb pins will interfere with the concentricity of the hair spring which possibly could introduce or exacurbate beat errors.

 

 

Here, Steve, is a question and answer from a previous post that may be relevent to your problem in classical physics.

[steven]

Both are a matter of the hairspring not following the path of the regulator. When you move the regulator, the regulator pin is pushing the hairspring out of the center which causes the beat error to change.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[oldhippy]

Have a look at this video Steve it might help you.

 

[steveorval]

thanks for all your help, when i had assembled the movement i checked that the coils were nice and flat and the coils looked pretty and even spaced even the arc from reg pins to anchor looked good but after your comments i looked again at higher mag as it was a small ladies watch and low and behold when i regulated it i could see it was pushing the coils sideways so i adjusted the arc in situ as at the moment i am not competent in stripping the balance still in practice mode but have now managed to get it running fast and am now trying to adjust so the reg indicator is central, wish me luck, anyway thanks again for the pointers.