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Hi, Strange timegrapher reading.....


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this is the best adjustment I can get it to. there is always two horizontal lines rather than the typical one line with the dots stacked either 1 or two pixels tall as im accustomed to regulating things down to. otherwise this is losing like 900+ seconds a day. put whole case on demagnetizer and had not made any changes. have adjusted everything out in max directions and spent more than an hour on paying with it and this is as good as it can be. movement is new and is approx 2 weeks old. sold to customer and 2days later said its running terrible, I adjusted it before I sent it out and it was running cosc..... unless it was dropped I cant think of anything please help!!

 

DA5224B1-7328-4678-A869-0B0D2B7441395520

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2 minutes ago, ro63rto said:

Califomia

it used to just say Ace timer.. Now it does have its location that may or may not actually exist? although if you do look on the website they do say they're based here   Los Angeles, California. then they do have a rather nice price for a Timegrapher 1000

http://www.acetimer.com/Watch-and-Pocket-Watch-Timing-Machine-Multifunction-Timegrapher-1000.html

 it would be nice to know which watch  you trying to regulate?

Then it's come up in a prior discussion the Chinese machines have issues of things go to extreme the numbers and the display doesn't always agree. So visually the graphical display the lines look to be far apart  numerically it does not agree that tells us it's probably  extremely out of beat.. The problem with using a timing machine only to put a watch in beat is there is no ± it's so easy to go past  and get hopelessly lost. It works much better if you would visually put it in beat reasonably close and then fine tune with the timing machine.  then  in your description you said you pushed things to the max, beat is in the middle not at a max  which is why you're probably grossly out of beat right now.

It also be helpful to have a picture of looking down at the balance assembly.

So the timing machine says your watches running a little bit slow  roughly 15 minutes a day is it actually running 15 minutes a day slow looking at the hands? Then visually looking at the balance wheel does it really look like 270° of amplitude?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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At this setting that you are reading on the timegrapher and is showing on the picture you posted, is the regulator all the way to one side? Could you take a picture directly above the balance? Can you adjust the beat error with the beat corrector to bring that closer to zero? I would tend to get that right first. It may need you twisting the collar on the balance staff to bring the roller jewel to the correct position, but if it is new I can't see that being the case, unless it was badly done at the factory. You never know..

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What is the measurement period that your Timegrapher is set for? My 1900 always gives an accurate and representative report on the timing and condition of the movement under test and I always rely up

on it. I often set it for 12 Secs sample period.  There seems to be a peculiarity in the time trace lines like a missing escape lock/unlock every few beats but it is not regular!. The time trace lines show a small loss but I feel that the Timegrapher electronic`s cannot get a regular and continuous "lock on" for the S/D reading due to the above irregularity. I reckon you need to examine the balance, pallet jewels and escape. Even so I would be surprised if that watch is actually losing 987 Sec`s a day on the wrist. I hope that I have not confused the issue. Regards, Mike.

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2 hours ago, clockboy said:

The reading on the timegrapher does not seem correct. For that amount of loss the lines should be almost virtical ticking downwards, also I did not think this machine recorded that amount of error.

Correct clockboy. The time trace lines shown indicate a small loss. Something is wrong not allowing a correct "lock" on the s/d reading. My 1900 will read up to +- 999 sec/day although I have never experienced this.

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This sort of thing has come up before as I mentioned in my message above. Previously the beat was the issue and for that discussion I have a link at the bottom.

Then because I’m curious and because I now have a Chinese 1000 timing machine I’m going to do an experiment. This unfortunately will result in quite a few images which probably will be in no particular order which is why I’ve label them and copious quantity of text that hopefully is readable and possibly makes sense hopefully.

Chinese 1000 timing machine with a Swiss Witschi watch expert two machine. Then one watch the Swiss 6498. Both machines are set the same lift angle same averaging time both machines should more or less be the same. They will not be the same because they actually function differently they average differently and it’s hard to get them to synchronize off the exact same part of the waveform at the same time but they should be reasonably close.

So the starting pictures both machines side-by-side. Both microphones on the same watch at the same time. Both machines almost identical for the beat error. Then picture of the balance assembly so you can see were the stud is.

So in the previous discussion 5 ms was an issue so I set the stud so both machines indicated 4.0 ms. Casually everything looks fine but there is a problem. Numerically both machines will go to 9.9 ms but at their current graphical resolution that would exceed the size of their displays. The witschi machine does have a way of adjusting the resolution but I did not make that adjustment.

So now we get the most interesting part of this experiment moving the stud to 8.5 ms we get a display that casually looks outstanding. If you weren’t paying attention to the 8.5 would you notice that there’s a problem with either display? So for a beat error 8.5 ms is very bad but casually the graphical display isn’t agreeing and actually looks much nicer than it did at 4.0 ms.

Then pushing the stud all the way to the maximum both machines do something differently now. Then I’m assuming based on where the stud was an 8.5 ms that this is now exceeded the 9.9 ms of both machines.

When is an error not an error? On paper tape machines if the line was heading off one edge it would then appear on the other edge. So maybe for both machines this isn’t considered an error when the graphical display still shows something. It’s almost like the display is a circle the top of the display is actually touching the bottom of the display. So numerically when you exceed the display it rolls over and you see something. Personally I still think this is an error which is one of the reasons you have to pay attention to both the graphical display and the numeric display if they don’t agree you have a problem.

Then witschi machines do have a variety of error messages and in this particular case nothing is being displayed it knows there’s a problem. so it gives us a clue and changing from standard mode to rate only typically fixes the problem. The machine is no longer trying to calculate out amplitude beat gives and gives you the rate with a graphical display.

Then for the Chinese machine no error messages and it attempts to display whatever it perceives it can. So I suspect the rate is correct but the beat at 0.7 ms is definitely not. This is where you have to be careful that you can’t always believe that the timing machine tells you.

We can see having a floating stud is great as it’s really easy to put the watch in beat but equally as easy to get hopelessly lost and have no idea where you are.

to understand beat I have a drawing of the balance wheel at its neutral position. then the drawing has the hairspring missing it needs to be on the balance wheel and all the power has to be off the watch. So they are looking for the same alignment as the drawing has unfortunately it's sometimes hard to see. It's easy to see that the pallet fork is between the banking pins which will get you reasonably close. It's harder to see the roller jewel and it has some play at the end of the pallet fork. So pictures attached you can see the pallet fork in the banking pins it's off by just a little bit we really can't see the roller jewel at all. Another picture showing where the stud is C can tell that there is not a lot of movement from a lot of adjustment of the stud. The timing machine assessment of my putting the watch in beat is 1.6 ms.

once your visually close to being in beat you can put it on the timing machine and carefully slowly move the stud. Not a lot of movement and the timing machine is not instantaneous. I would actually look at the graphical display other than the numbers which tend to be even slower..

this request will probably go unnoticed like it was last time but I asked for a photograph and I wasn't the only person who needed a photograph. So the ideal photograph is of the balance wheel showing the hairspring.

two more images one of which gives us a clue. As already discussed above  the graphical display does not indicate what the numbers do the numbers though agree at least as far as rate with what the watches actually doing. My watch adjusted to the absolute maximum slow is only 50% of the watch in this discussion. So my guess is it's not a regulation issue providing quality control ask he did verify that it was keeping time with departed it's not a gross manufacturing error. Simplistic of all of this is they hairspring is probably no longer in the regulator pins. at least that's going to be my wild guess.

 

 

https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/3407-single-line-and-57ms-beat-error/

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Another great post John. The  Chinese Timegrapher has it's limits and your experiment shows (IMO) the Witschi is the better machine. I have a Timergrapher 1900 and have found very often it gets lost if a watch is way out of beat or has very poor amplitude. I have found reducing its sensitivity really helps especially on pin lever movements. If I had room in my tiny workshop (and some spare cash) I would go to a PC based software system such as sold by "Delph Electronics". 

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