Watchwinder Basics

A Watchwinder is a powered device designed to keep an automatic watch fully wound, eliminating the need for manual rewinding and resetting. Frequently, owners of automatic watches have more than one watch. They may have a stainless-steel watch which is used for sports events, swimming, diving, etc. They may use another watch for normal daytime office or business activities and yet another for evening or formal social events (frequently, a gold watch). Clearly, the task of keeping several watches continuously wound can be challenging and many multiple watch owners employ one or more Watchwinders to accomplish the task.

Mechanical wristwatches employ spring drives for their motive power. However, when unworn, after about forty-eight hours, the mainspring fully unwinds and the watch stops. Many automatic watches not only keep time, they also provide “complications” such as day and date (the calendar watch), or, in more sophisticated automatic watches, display month, year, leap-year, lunar phase, tide time, elapsed time, world time zones, etc. Naturally, each additional complication also consumes some spring power and further reduces the operating time between windings. All such watches, when fully unwound, must be reset in order to wear them. Just resetting the time, date and a day can be annoying. As the number of complications increase, do does the task of completely resetting the watch.

Continuous rotation of an automatic watch increases wear and tear of the winding mechanism components. Typically, motion of the wearer’s wrist when walking or working is only intermittent. Obviously, some Watchwinders do not replicate this human motion. Buyer beware….your expensive watch could be at risk!

Buyer beware….your expensive watch could be at risk!

All of the ORBITA Watchwinders employ a unique and safe design concept for watch winding. Our design employs a solid-state microprocessor which controls a DC gear motor which is battery or AC powered and which intermittently drives a rotating cup. The cup carries the cushion mounted watch and rotates for a short period of time (one or two minutes) and then “goes to sleep.” The sleep period is easily programmed by the user based on the make of the watch. Typically, the time controls turns per day (TPD) of 650, 800, 900 and 1300 TPD. This provides sufficient motion to keep the watch wound while, at the same time, eliminating any concern of over-winding.

In addition, ORBITA Watchwinders have several unique features which differentiate them from competitive watchwinding products:

Automatic watch sizing – no adjustment required

Simple and convenient watch placement

Easy watch removal from winder

Natural winding action

Extremely quiet operation

Safety – Watch cannot fall off cushion

Safety – No metal to metal contact