# Any quartz movements that have a sweeping second hand?



## Brig

Other than the SpringDrive of course. Sweeping in this case to mean ticking more than once a second or pure sweep.


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## rex

*I've seen contemporary quartz clocks that have sweep seconds, but no watches.>>*

At a Sharper Image and Brookstone store.



Brig said:


> Other than the SpringDrive of course. Sweeping in this case to mean ticking more than once a second or pure sweep.


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## martback

*Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*

More of a standard than a high end caliber. Here is a recent post on the Seiko forum about this watch.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/78440/message/1213629921/Question+about+Seiko+Sweep+Second+5S21-0A10

/ martin


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## M4tt

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*

Just to be pedantic for a change, the 5s21 _simulates _a smooth sweep in a rather impressive manner. To begin with the stepper motor (yes, it uses a stepper motor) fires every 250ms, four times more often than the standard stepper motor. Next this impulse is fed through a spiral spring and into a damper system which feeds the pulse smoothly into the gear train to give the impression of a smooth continuous push from the stepper motor.

The stepper motor is continuously tensioning one end of the spring in a lumpy manner while at the other end this energy is drawn off in a smooth manner. In a funny way this is the opposite of a standard escapement! It's very ingenious but even by spring drive standards it's a hell of a kludge with no value except the aesthetic.

For those with a real interest here's the tech sheet.

http://service.seiko.com.au/i/seiko/documents/technicalguides/5S21A.pdf

However, the same complaint could be made of the Spring drive: while the spring is indeed analogue the control system is digital and involves some fairly violent breaking and acceleration. While the movement appears smooth it is not and, from the right inertial frame, it would be very obvious that the SD's glide wheel in fact 'ticks' (read decelerates and accelerates violently) several times a second. It just does not stop from our point of view.

The smoothest movement available is probably the Omega F 720 Megasonic. This uses a tuning fork which vibrates at 720Hz so the discrete ticks occur much much closer together than in any other system. Of course, while this is tending towards analogue, it is no such thing. However it is the most asymptotically analogue timekeeper since the clepsydra or the gnomon.

I guess the problem is that the occidental approach to timekeeping has always approached the problem in a 'quantum' manner - our very conceptualisation of time is digital. Ironically the Chinese had a massive head start on us producing accurate hydromechanical (and truely analogue) time keepers nearly a thousand years ago and keeping a tradition of escapement free measurement of time. Only with the arrival of western clock was this avenue abandoned.

I have sometimes wondered where this way of looking at the problem might have taken Chinese horology with the arrival of the 'smooth' timebase of quartz. Today we take the stepper motor as the definitive answer but I see no principled reason why a number of different approaches could not have been taken. The Beta 21 for example used essentially the same approach as the megasonic. I feel certain that a mind tuned in a different manner would find a different approach which did not unconsciously ape the action of an escapement.

Thus, without that European intervention the watch you seek may have been in production by Tianjin as we speak!


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## martback

*Interesting, thanks for the extra info - nt*

nt


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## Bruce Reding

Good info, Matt! I didn't know that about the 5S21. On the SpringDrives, we've had some photos here (years ago) that showed the "lumpiness" of the movement in closeup macro shots of the seconds hand.

The Beta 21 was indeed quite smooth. Here's an example ...










From the sublime to the comic, here's a watch where the seconds hand (Tintin's race car) moves twice a second ...


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## M4tt

Having spent a few minutes, _quite a few minutes_, fiddling here are some pictures of the Megasionic being very very smooth indeed!










and here's an attempt at a close up:










And as this is the HEQ forum here is the obligitory movement shot. And yes, I have just slipped the battery in for a moment to take the shots.










This is not a quiet watch. It will always find the resonant frequency of something. I have spent hours trying to trace a 'fan fault' on my pc before realising that I had carelessly failed to kill the damn thing after use. It's like having a psychotic mosquito strapped to your wrist. Hold it against a window, metal or any high quality wood and it wails mournfully! If someone told me it was haunted I would believe them.


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## Fatpants

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*

Great stuff - as always - M;-)


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## Brig

Thanks for the replies all. It looks like the 5s21 movt was produced for only a year or two during the late 80s (or earily 90s?) 

Looks like it will be tricky to find one to say the least.


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## Agent J

The Accutron 214 movement has a real nice sweep. I realize that technically it is not a quartz, it is electronic though!


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## Eeeb

Well, there is a Bulova Accuquartz (which is actually the Accuquartz I) which is quartz controlled with the same sort of movement of the second hand as the 214/218.

(The Accuquartz II was the name they used for their Autoquartz watch.)


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## M4tt

It's amazing how I always forget Bulova. There is indeed - the same approach as the Beta 21.


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## drbob

What about the Citizen Campanola?


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## M4tt

drbob said:


> What about the Citizen Campanola?


A slightly more detailed question might be helpful in eliciting the answer you are after. However the campanola, while nicely made, uses, as far as I know, ordinary stepper motors and thus has a clear tick.

Are you thinking of a fast moving moving 'split seconds' hand which allows one to measure time down to tenths of a second? This still moves in discrete jumps, it just does it rapidly enough for the 'phi phenomenon' to allow our visual preprocessing to percieve the ticks as smooth movement.


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## webvan

Just got my grubby hands on an Omega Electroquartz and it is indeed sweeping!


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## zw1009

gevril makes a mechaquartz watch that has a sweeping second hand, I beleive it is limited edition, if you want to know more about it pm me, we have some at the shop I work at....


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## Catalin

zw1009 said:


> gevril makes a mechaquartz watch that has a sweeping second hand, I beleive it is limited edition, if you want to know more about it pm me, we have some at the shop I work at....


I would be VERY surprised if that would be a smooth seconds-hand in the direction implied by the original poster - which has used the wrong words in the title but specified very clear after that:



Brig said:


> Other than the SpringDrive of course. Sweeping in this case to mean ticking more than once a second or pure sweep.


And speaking of Gevril - no offense but GV2 quartz seems (from the very little that I could find on the net) a decent-quality 200-300$ watch which is promoted as limited edition at dubious prices.


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## shandy

Whilst the second hand does not sweep the Chronograph hand on my excellent new Citizen 2100 does. Well worth checking this model out!
Here is fellow forum member MiniDrivers excellent video review of it, at around 5.50 seconds he shows the sweep of the chronograph hand!


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## Catalin

ianmedium said:


> Whilst the second hand does not sweep the Chronograph hand on my excellent new Citizen 2100 does. Well worth checking this model out!
> Here is fellow forum member MiniDrivers excellent video review of it, at around 5.50 seconds he shows the sweep of the chronograph hand!


There are a lot of chronographs with a hand moving in steps smaller than one second (I believe dating more than 20 years back, with plenty of models from Seiko, Citizen and ETA) - but so far no model applied the same idea for the main seconds-hand (of a non-chrono watch) - my feeling is that the power consumption is a problem on the long term - but I would have expected that to be acceptable on a solar watch (like the Citizen Exceed).


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## webvan

Half second increments apparently according to the review ? Thanks for the hint, I was thinking about looking into an Ecodrive Chrono. The guys mentions flyback, but it's only to reset after it's been stopped apparently, not an actual "on the fly" reset ?


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## Eeeb

Catalin said:


> There are a lot of chronographs with a hand moving in steps smaller than one second (I believe dating more than 20 years back, with plenty of models from Seiko, Citizen and ETA) - but so far no model applied the same idea for the main seconds-hand (of a non-chrono watch) - my feeling is that the power consumption is a problem on the long term - but I would have expected that to be acceptable on a solar watch (like the Citizen Exceed).


For mechanicals the second hand will twitch once every beat of the watch. For quartz you can make it twitch as often as you want. For some of it's DD chrono module based chronographs Heuer did it twice a second. I believe David said his IWC did it 16 times a second.

Since these chronos don't have a center second, it is very difficult to say if it applies to the subsecond dial... I'll have to look at some of my Heuers and see if I can see. ... not being an aardvark, it may be difficult for me to tell by sight.


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## dwjquest

Eeeb said:


> For mechanicals the second hand will twitch once every beat of the watch. For quartz you can make it twitch as often as you want. For some of it's DD chrono module based chronographs Heuer did it twice a second. I believe David said his IWC did it 16 times a second.
> 
> Since these chronos don't have a center second, it is very difficult to say if it applies to the subsecond dial... I'll have to look at some of my Heuers and see if I can see. ... not being an aardvark, it may be difficult for me to tell by sight.


If you are referring to the David (dwjquest), my IWC and JLC mecaquartz chronographs move 4 times per second while acting as a stopwatch. The normal second hand moves once per second. Other versions of the mecaquartz movement, not produced by JLC, are supposed to move 16 times per second in the chronograph mode.

The chronograph second hand in the JLC mecaquartz is driven by a separate 4 Hz stepping motor.


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## Eeeb

dwjquest said:


> If you are referring to the David (dwjquest), my IWC and JLC mecaquartz chronographs move 4 times per second while acting as a stopwatch. The normal second hand moves once per second. Other versions of the mecaquartz movement, not produced by JLC, are supposed to move 16 times per second in the chronograph mode.
> 
> The chronograph second hand in the JLC mecaquartz is driven by a separate 4 Hz stepping motor.


Thanks for the clarification! I did check one of my Heuers that has the 2 tick per second chrono timing. The subsecond hand also has 2 ticks per second.


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## Time

Hi,
I have a Seiko Brightz chrono with the 7j21 movement. If I let the second hand run, it looks like an automatic. It does not have that jump as a regular quartz.


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## ptran

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*



M4tt said:


> However, the same complaint could be made of the Spring drive: while the spring is indeed analogue the control system is digital and involves some fairly violent breaking and acceleration. While the movement appears smooth it is not and, from the right inertial frame, it would be very obvious that the SD's glide wheel in fact 'ticks' (read decelerates and accelerates violently) several times a second. It just does not stop from our point of view.


I don't know if the braking of the Spring Drive flywheel is at all violent. It's pulsed electromagnetic retardation, without any physical contact. Without retardation, the flywheel spins slightly faster than it should, and with retardation, slightly slower. The retardation is pulsed quickly many times a second so that the average rotational speed of the flywheel is 8 Hz (if I recall correctly). The inertial mass of the flywheel further dampens the pulses. If you were to plot the angular velocity of the flywheel vs time, it would be smooth and quite constant.



Bruce Reding said:


> On the SpringDrives, we've had some photos here (years ago) that showed the "lumpiness" of the movement in closeup macro shots of the seconds hand.


Can you point me to those photos? Here's a 5-second sweep of one of my Spring Drives, and I can't really see any "lumpiness" in it:


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## Catalin

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*



ptran said:


> I don't know if the braking of the Spring Drive flywheel is at all violent. It's pulsed electromagnetic retardation, without any physical contact. Without retardation, the flywheel spins slightly faster than it should, and with retardation, slightly slower. The retardation is pulsed quickly many times a second so that the average rotational speed of the flywheel is 8 Hz (if I recall correctly). The inertial mass of the flywheel further dampens the pulses. If you were to plot the angular velocity of the flywheel vs time, it would be smooth and quite constant.
> ...


I have to admit I would myself expect the scenario described by you above - but the best way to settle that forever would be to go with one of the high frame-per-sec cameras (now available low-cost) in direct sun and then post the movie on youtube ... (eventually together with the movie from a 28800 mechanical).


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## webvan

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*

Sorry for the OT, what cameras do you have in mind ?


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## Catalin

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*



webvan said:


> Sorry for the OT, what cameras do you have in mind ?


For instance Casio EX-F1 - from a review on gizmodo:

"Also, to recap: when shooting at 300fps, you get "standard" video resolution of 512x384. At 600fps, it drops to a tolerable widescreen, 432x192. But when you shoot in 1200fps, you end up with a bizarre 336x96, really long and thin."


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## webvan

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*

Thanks, I think my Panny TZ7 has a mode like that too, the FX100 had one for sure.


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## webvan

*Re: Seiko 5S21 is a sweep second*



M4tt said:


> Just to be pedantic for a change, the 5s21 _simulates _a smooth sweep in a rather impressive manner...For those with a real interest here's the tech sheet.
> 
> http://service.seiko.com.au/i/seiko/documents/technicalguides/5S21A.pdf


Thanks for that manual, and after going over it, it seems that like the SD there is no way to regulate it?


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## martback

This mid-60s Seiko Crystal Chronometer also has a sweep second. Definitely HEQ but only for those that like really big watches (or medium size clocks).






/ martin



Brig said:


> Other than the SpringDrive of course. Sweeping in this case to mean ticking more than once a second or pure sweep.


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