MB&F and Urwerk make some of the most extraordinary watches I’ve ever seen. I absolutely love the masterpieces that come out of their factories. The watches take the non-traditional approach of “more is more” with very complicated movements. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to tell if you’re looking at a watch or some sort of jewelry from an alien planet.
The collaboration between the two companies is, sort of, a watch brand called C3H5N3O9 – also known as nitroglycerin, the active ingredient in dynamite. The watch itself is called Experiment ZR102 and they’re calling it an “experiment” because only 12 pieces will be produced this year.
The beauty of this watch is its over complication of the movement and the watch dial. Why use regular minute/second/hour hands when you can make the entire watch movement part of the time telling experience?
Some of our more astute readers probably noticed something familiar about the ZR102 experiment watch; the way the watch tells time looks like a car engine, more precisely a Wankel engine. The Wankel engine is commonly known as a rotary engine and found in some Mazda sports cars. The engine was originally created by a 17 year old German named Felix Wankel in 1919. The benefits of this type of engine is its small size, weight, and lower number of moving parts. The engine performs intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust in one cycle as opposed to four cycles in a four-stroke engine. Have a look at the illustration to the right for a better understanding of the way it works. You can click to enlarge and animate.
Back to the watch, the experimental ZR102’s Wankel engine doesn’t perform any combustion, which would be pretty cool; it only takes the engine’s design. There are eccentric rotating Releaux polygons on the dial, the larger one points to the 12 hour markers and the smaller one points to the minute markers. In the picture below, the time is 8:28-ish.
The case for the ZR102 watch is made by MB&F out of Zirconium (ZR) and measures 55mm x 44mm, the lugs are made out of aluminum. The movement is made by Urwerk. This year only 12 watches will be produced at a price of 110,000 Swiss Francs (or about $115,000 at today’s exchange rate) and next year another 12 pieces will be produced in rose-gold cases.
C3H5N309 Experiment ZR102 Watch by MB&F and Urwerk
There aren’t currently any plans for other collaborations between the two companies, but I think and hope we’ll see more out of this world timepieces created in future collaborations. If you want one of these watches, you’ll need to place an order at the C3H5N3O9 website.
