I'm an amateur, but I like professional tools, and this software, which runs on everything from a small Raspberry Pi to machine powered by the Beast of Redmond, presents an inside view of your watch's movement - it's not an x-ray, but a sophisticated sound analysis!
Here we see a Seiko SRP615, which uses a 4R36 movement:
You can download and build the client from source, install binaries, or as I did, install non-native binaries and run the client in emulation under CrossOver for the Mac.
The first task is to 'calibrate' the software to your soundcard. Clamp a quartz watch onto your input mic (I used a Logitech webcam), then click the Calibrate button. Let Tg collect data and it will eventually display an offset value to use when running an analysis of your automatic watch. You'll want to make sure that the input sound is 'clean' (represented on the bottom line of the picture) so you'll get best results, but Tg is pretty robust - it will work!
You can use the 's/d' values to determine if your watch is running too slow or too fast. You'll want to see the differences between these values with the watch in different positions (dial up/down, crown up/down, etc.) Then crack your caseback, adjust, and check again. This can save a lot of time instead of doing the adjustment, then letting the watch run for two days or so.
Have fun, and thanks, Marcello!
btw, it also appears that my manual regulation efforts, conducted before trying this software, were pretty successful with my skx007:
Oh most excellent! A ham whose into watches AND in touch with his Inner Penguin™ :D
ReplyDeleteYou get decent results using the mic in your webcam for a pickup? Huh. I've been checking out some do-it-yourself-ers on watchuseek.com's Watchmaking forum. Most seem to be going with small piezo disks mounted to movement holders of some form or another. I think that's what I'm going to try. I'd also thought about using one of those itty bitty condenser mic capsules that all the parts houses sell. I was thinking a cardioid mic might be less susceptible to vibration and environmental noise.
73! de WA4UF Bruce
[deleted and reentered because I forgot my callsign :D ]
tks, OM... and yes, i keep my RPi3B just the way it is for a dedicated time grapher - gonna need it soon, as my SRP315 is slowing down after almost 1,000 miles of morning swims in the pool!
Delete