We collaborated with Citizen to bring a private event to selected media and collectors in Singapore. The event showcases Citizen’s leadership in the use of titanium in watches.
All you need to know about Citizen’s Super Titanium: why its great and why you need to know
YouTube video of the event with technical know-how explained
The event was held in Cargo39 in Singapore, an event white space which then outfitted with the explanation stations to showcase titanium. As the Citizen tagline goes “The Beauty of Time”.
It may be of interest that this year, Citizen marks 55 years of pioneering titanium in watchmaking. The first ever watch to be made in titanium was the Citizen X-8 Chronometer which was released in 1970. This was a full 10 years ahead of the first use of titanium in a Swiss made watch – the IWC Porsche Design series.
And Citizen continued to innovate the use of titanium, despite the material being very difficult to work with. Titanium was challenging to be pressed, machined or polished. It has low thermal conductivity, causing it to stick to the machining edges of cutting tools and have highly combustible shavings. Initially, it was impossible to achieve a mirror polish, but Citizen solved these problems.
For example, we have personally examined Citizen Titanium watches with polished case parts and bracelet links from more than 20 years ago.
In their search to improve the use of titanium in watches, Citizen invented the Duratect technique. This is a surface hardening technology, to achieve a dramatic improvement in surface hardness while keeping the appearance of the surface. The combination of finished titanium with Duratect led to the what Citizen calls Super Titanium, a proprietary surface hardening technology for solid titanium which makes it 5 times harder than steel and highly resistant to scratches while remaining lightweight and gentle on the skin.
Citizen also showcased their ability to produce the hardened surface to a wide range of colours, which are being incorporated into their new watches. Kazuma Sato, Surface Treatment Engineer explained to us that the colours appear like that on the surface of a soap bubble, and any colour which is seen on the bubble can theoretically be made.
The trick is to know how to fine tune the manufacturing condition to achieve each of the colours as desired. New colours include Amber yellow, which results in a case which looks like it is made of yellow gold, but with the characteristic lightness of titanium. And the deep blue in the Duratect DLC Blue which we see in the latest series of the Atessa.
Concluding thoughts
We thank the guests and media who attended the event, and the feedback we received from the attendees, as well as the Citizen management is very positive. We will be doing more educational events like this in the future.
Photo Notes: still photographs of the event are courtesy of Melvin Quah.
