Watchlords

Came across this link at work: https://www.metal-am.com/iperionx-partn ... m-watches/

Panerai is having a 3D printing shop in North Carolina, USA manufacture watch cases made of recycled titanium.



"IperionX Limited, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, has entered a commercial partnership agreement with Italy’s Officine Panerai, a branch of Compagnie Financière Richemont SA, Switzerland, to produce unique high-end watches from IperionX’s sustainable, fully recycled titanium.

IperionX has worked closely with Panerai’s product and technical teams to identify suitable watch designs to be additively manufactured using its titanium metal powders. The company has produced prototype watch blanks for Panerai that have passed the rigorous metallographic testing and surface quality requirements for the luxury market, and will commence Additive Manufacturing of a watch case for a limited edition design that will be released to market in 2023.

IperionX and Panerai will continue to work on additional watch designs that will incorporate additional sales agreements for future watch designs.

And check out this titanium mesh strap, also made using a 3D printing process.



Uniformwares.com was to use it for one of their watches but I couldn't find the strap anywhere on their site. No mention of the strap on the website of the company that printed it, either. The strap weighed just 10.5 grams. They must've sold out and had no plans to sell more.

found this site that shows the watch with the strap so some must be still out in the wild.
https://clothbase.com/items/6b9542e2_un ... form-wares

Recycle this!

I'll bet the movements won't be decorated, either.

titanium powder is very flammable but 3D printing of metals is always done under an inert atmosphere; usually argon gas. But once the parts are printed, all the powder has to be vacuumed, brushed or vibrated out of the parts. That's done under an inert atmosphere.

Then the parts get stress relieved, then undergo a heat treat process. That gets rid of micro voids and strengthens the grain structure of the metal.

Then the parts are machined, faced, tapped, swaged, and finally, polished.

The metal powder not made into a part is sieved and recycled. Nobody throws titanium away. Machine shops don't even throw steel away, or aluminum. It all gets recycled.

So Panerai and IperionX are just blowing marketing smoke when they talk about recycling.