Ulysse Nardin’s first completely in-house automatic movement was introduced on the 160th anniversary of the company. The Caliber 160 uses escape wheels made from silicon. Because it has two wheels instead of one (as in the Swiss-lever escapement), the mass of these wheels had to be radically reduced so that the power supply to the escapement did not have to increase. To accomplish this, Ulysse Nardin turned to LIGA technology, a special technique involving photolithography and electro-plating to build these escape wheels from silicon. Inside Information: Not all small-seconds indicators are created equal. This indicator also expresses the manufacture’s focus on functional movement design. In the new movement, this small-seconds indicator is direct drive, which translates into zero loss of precision. In addition, the Caliber 160 is a hack seconds movement, meaning that the balance wheel is stopped when the crown of the watch is pulled out to set the hands. This allows the hands to be set precisely without having to compensate for a continually running seconds hand.
