Richard Mille

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RM 035 Minor changes, and coating corrosion?!

Ciao all on this passion filled world of Richard Mille!

Trust you all had a great start to the week!

A few changes i'd like to point out that has seem to occurred to the RM 035 even before the productions models are out.

I do not know whether this are all true or is it just an error ( unlikely though) is that if you notice on the RM homepage, in the spec sheet of the RM 035 there has been quite some changes to the materials used in the case of the 35. Previously, the entire case was crafted out of an alloy of Aluminium and Magnesium known as AZ91,but now the caseband alone has been changed to Magnesium WE 54 which is composed of the following,

Yttrium 4.75~5.5%

Rare earths 3~4% (Consisting of neodymium 1.5~2%, heavy rare earths such as ytterbium, erbium, dysprosium& gadolinium)

Zirconium minimum of 0.4%

with Magnesium adding up to the remainding balance, with a miniumum of 90%.

And the bezel and back are crafted out of Aluminium 2000, an alloy formerly known as Duralumin which was once the most common aerospace alloy, that comprises of copper, manganese and magnesium alloyed with the remainder in Aluminium.

On top of that even the coating process seems to have changed from "Titalyt 2" to "Miarox".  On a side note, for the RM 038 it seems that the entire case is crafted out of WE54 ( no difference between caseband and bezel/caseback) while the coating process has also been changed to Miarox. I wonder if Aluminium 2000 is any less stronger than WE 54? Since it is the bezel of a watch that is likely to get banged against other surfaces the most, i wonder if this shall play out any disadvantage majorly for the 35 over the 38?

I wonder if these changes have been made due to another problem which i am about to point out.

Now you all may remember that awhile back RM Japan auctioned off a prototype of the RM 35 in Japan to benefit a charity to assist in the victims of the March 11 Earthquake and Tsunami. The owner who won the auction naturally is one happy person who wears it virtually daily. It is summer time in Tokyo now and it gets very hot there, easily over 35 degrees celsius during the day. As humans we naturally sweat, and it seems that now there is a reaction happening between his sweat and the coating on the caseback of his 35, as the blackish coatings seems to be corroding away leaving the underneath silverish metal visible! It is a horrendous sight! He has brought this issue to RM Japan and they are enquiring back to RM HQ. Whether this is really due to the sweat or to other factors is not known at this moment, but previous models which have had coatings such as Titalyt and DLC have not had such problems encountered before.

I will keep the forums updated as soon as i know something regarding this.

But it got me thinking, if even the final production version faces the same problem, in a way that Panerai's composite is allergic to alcohol although that is a totally different story, i don't think i'm enthusiastic about the 35 at all cause i sure do sweat a fair bit especially i live in Asia!

Let's hope that the abovementioned changes were made BECAUSE RM discovered this weakness even before the lucky ( or rather unfortunate depending on the way you see it) owner even faced it!

This further hammers in my personal motto, never to purchase prototypes whether of watches, or of game machines where glitches ALWAYS happens with the 1st batch.

Ciao!

Stephen

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