Silicon pioneer Ulysse Nardin is still attempting to push the boundaries of what the material can achieve: behold the Freak neXt.

by James Buttery

Ulysse Nardin has revealed details of its latest developments in silicone, fittingly in a concept watch that also marks the next stage of the famed Freak model, the first wristwatch to use a silicon hairspring when it launched in 2001.
Freak neXt swaps a traditional hairspring for a four-layered silicone structure with no physical pivot point which incredibly, given its dimensions, is manufactured as separate layers and assembled by hand using silicone spacers. The fifth attached layer is the balance wheel.

Ulysse Nardin?s research and innovation director, Stéphane von Gunten has been working, on and off, on the development for a decade, filing the patent in 2009. The project relies on the physical properties of ?compliant mechanisms? or structures designed to allow for elastic deformation which then return to their original shape. One such mechanism is currently monitoring seismic activity on the surface of Mars.

This is not the first time we?ve seen compliant mechanisms used in watchmaking. In 2017 Zenith?s Defy LAB saw a single silicone disc replace the traditional functions of balance wheel, hairspring and anchor.
?Zenith decided to have a low amplitude on a single layer,? explains von Gunten. ?Something compact. The reason we have the extra layers is to get more amplitude and to work with a normal escapement, the idea i...