200+ bridges per ring / Numerals 1-31 intact
Watchmaking | Mechanical Components | Laser Micro Cutting & Etching
Metal Date Wheel for Mechanical Watch Industry
What We Built
These are metal date rings for mechanical watch movements. The ring sits behind the dial and carries the date numerals 1 through 31, each cut as a clean aperture.
The bridges between numerals are only 0.06 mm wide, and the inner and outer rings must stay concentric within 0.015 mm. Any distortion, burr, or fold line on the numerals shows up immediately under the watch crystal.
The Problem
The client was stamping these rings from 0.3 mm stainless steel shim stock. Over progressive die runs, the punch wear widened the bridge sections and pulled the outer ring out of round.
Concentricity drifted past 0.03 mm, so the ring rubbed against the movement spacer. Worse, the stamping shear left micro-folds along the numeral edges.
Those folds caught light and looked like scratches under 10× loupe inspection. They needed a process that could hold 0.06 mm bridges repeatably and keep the entire ring flat and concentric without die degradation.
How We Fixed It
We switched to laser micro cutting from flat sheet. The laser follows the CAD contour directly, so there is no punch wear changing the bridge width from the first ring to the two-hundredth.
We use a 0.3 mm precipitation-hardened stainless steel sheet, stress-relieved before cutting. The cut path is optimized to distribute heat: inner ring first, then numerals in alternating sequence to balance thermal input.
After cutting, we run a passivation cycle to remove any micro-slag from the kerf walls. Every ring gets optical CMM checked for concentricity and a 30× visual inspection for fold lines on all 31 numerals.
The same thin-section and edge-control considerations apply to precision metal profile cutting for other watch components.
Numbers That Matter
Inner to outer ring / Zero rub on spacer
Stress relief / Laser micro-cut / Passivation
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