The main advantages of the aluminum bezel inserts are the availability and price. For example, the Explorer II has a fixed hour marked bezel, while the new Air-King is topped with a smooth domed stainless steel bezel.
Today, however, since the stainless steel option has been switched out for ceramic bezels on the Daytona, the only metal bezels currently available from Rolex are gold ones on the two-tone or full gold Daytona models. To find older Daytona chronographs with steel bezels, the pre-owned or vintage market is the best bet. Some Rolex wearers actually enjoy those scratches on their watches as they suggest a life well lived for their beloved Rolexes.
So while Rolex is moving forward swiftly with arming their sports watches with ceramic bezels, the aluminum and stainless steel options are still very much valued and sought after by fans of the brand.
Each material has its own pros and cons and the bottom line is to pick one that is both aesthetically pleasing to you and practical to maintain. Paul is the company's Founder and CEO. He is responsible for all the day to day activities from purchasing, receiving, marketing and sales. Paul is a graduate of Boston College and resides in California with his family. I really love the look of the Batman bezel and asked my local Rolex dealer is they could do that for me. They did, they could not change it to a Batman bezel unless the Batman was available in the year my watch was made.
In other words, they would only make changes to styles that were available at the time my watch was made. My questions are, can I change out my existing bezel with a new ceramic Batman bezel, if I can find one? Will it fit? Is there a specific part number for that? Do you sell this part for my watch? I look forward to your reply.
Hi Kurt, What your local Rolex dealer told you is entirely correct. Ceramic is pressed into the desired shape. The pre-formed pieces are then baked at an extremely high temperature. After the ceramic is finished cooling, it is milled into the desired shape and polished. During this heating and cooling process, ceramics can be changed into a variety of colors and often get coated with a very fine layer of a precious metal. Ceramic boasts a hardness that is unlike any traditional watch metal, such as stainless steel or gold.
It is considered to be scratch proof and to not show signs of wearing, even after years. Many brands choose to use ceramics in sport and dive models as it can withstand chemical erosion and is anti-magnetic. Even though ceramic is strong and looks like it would be heavy on the wrist, it is actually lightweight and rivals aluminum on the scale. The light weight of the material also makes the watch comfortable to wear.
This means that even people with sensitive skin can still wear a ceramic case or band on their watch without having to worry about the allergic reaction that may follow. While ceramic is extremely durable and can resist scratches and common damages, due to the molecular structure it is not resistant to shattering. In other terms, it shatters, just like ceramics.
The bonds and in the larger sense, the crystals of ceramics are locked in position very strongly, thanks to a combination of ionic and covalent bonds seriously, just know they are pretty strong and stable and the shape and distribution of the crystals. These strong bonds have very little ability to shift under force, so huge amounts of pressure can be applied and the material will hold strong. However, this only holds true in compression. Under shearing, tension, or high-speed shock the bonds fail at much lower forces and the ceramic shatters.
This is due to the fact that the inherent strength of the bonds and the formation of the crystals create a direction to the material on a micro level.
The grain as the micro-crystals are referred to has a shape resembling overlapping stones in a stone wall. The grain is stacked and packed tightly together with somewhat random orientation. Depending on grain size, the stacks will, at a very small level, have grain boundaries that happen to line up with each other creating a continuous grain boundary where an aggregate slip could occur.
This requires a lot of force, but when the positions are disturbed, they move away from the complimentary grain boundary and cannot find a new position random grain size and orientation which causes the material to continue this slippage outward and shattering begins.
The Chanel J12 introduced ceramic-encased watches to a wider, more fashion-conscious public. The reason this is a critical function of ceramics is that it creates a very specific set of strengths. When you want an object to withstand a high amount of forces without showing signs of the force, ceramics are your best bet.
The bonds create a super-strong material that can maintain its shape very well. But the shearing forces that occur when high force is concentrated on a small area create a slippage in the grain boundary and the material fails. This is why you can hit a rock with a sledge hammer and only have it crush the very smallest amount of material on the surface, while hitting it with a pointed pick can cause the entire rock to shatter or crack completely through as a slippage moves through the material.
With advanced ceramics, the size, shape, and general distribution of grain can be controlled to a certain extent, creating different types of ceramics with enhanced properties in different ways. Some are made to allow a small amount of plastic deformation bending and moving like metal can , while some are created to withstand enormous compression force when there is little risk of impact or shearing. This all has to have an application, right? Watch cases, bezels, and other external components are designed with ceramics that can handle bumps and dings without problem, creating virtually scratch-proof components.
These components are actually pretty sizable, though, compared to internal components. They have enough mass and grain variation that they will be able to withstand a lot of abuse.
The nose and underbelly of space shuttles have ceramic tiles to insulate from the blast-furnace heat of re-entry. The larger the ceramic part, the more robust it is.
This is not anything miraculous, really; almost every material gets stronger as it gets bigger. But there is a certain threshold for size going smaller, where the number of grains is so few that the entire structure is made of proportionately large grain boundaries. And we all know what happens when a shearing force is applied along a grain boundary, right?
You guessed it: catastrophic failure, shattering, and disintegration. How exactly did it come to this? Its immense hardness makes it an ideal material for knives, brake discs on race cars, and extremely durable ball bearings. Jaeger-LeCoultre took advantage of this by putting ceramic bearings in an automatic winding mechanism in , but that was by no means the first use of the material in watchmaking.
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