New Escapements Under Development

In the race for new escapements, two serious new contenders appeared at the last “learning day” of the Swiss Society of Chronometry: Vaucher collaborated with the CSEM to introduce the Genequand escapement. Forget about the conventional hairspring: this newcomer replaces it with two short, small, flexible blades attached directly to the balance wheel. Made entirely of silicon, it significantly increases the power reserve due to its very low energy consumption. At the moment, it is still a prototype that must be improved to be industrialized. It is slated to be introduced in Parmigiani Fleurier watches. Presented publicly the same day, the IsoSpring escapement eliminates the traditional escapement in lieu of a bi-dimensional construct comprising flexible blades. Developed by the EPFL Instant-Lab under the direction of Pofessor. Simon Henein, the IsoSpring ensures unidirectional control of the energy. At the moment, the IsoSpring is still at an experimental level but the goal is to miniaturize it as soon as possible. This concept of unidirectional motion has already been explored for the last three years by De Bethune with its Résonique project. Passing by the manufacture, we stopped in to ask technical director Denis Flageollet about the actual state of his research.