THE WATCH AFFAIR

RICHARD MILLE RM 022 CARBON LIMITED EDITION

Richard Mille is at again, this time announcing the release of a highly limited, super cool, new RM 022 Carbon timepiece. And when we say highly limited, we mean highly limited! Just five of these futuristic marvels will be available for sale from July 2012 at selected retailers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Russia, so if you want one you better act quickly.


The RM 022 Carbon
Released earlier this year the RM 022 tourbillon “Aerodyne” Dual Time Zone features an orthorhombic honeycombed titanium aluminide and carbon nanofiber baseplate (talk about a mouthful!) According to the brand orthorhombic titanium aluminides are new group of alloys, developed from the main class of titanium aluminides and are characterized by a high level of stiffness, low thermal expansion coefficient and exceptional torsion resistance. In other words they are extremely strong and rigid.
For the RM 022 Carbon edition the titanium case has been replaced with a specially designed case created by the injection moulding of carbon nanotubes under high pressure into a black polymer. This process produces a robust composite that is extremely strong (200 times stronger than steel) whilst still remaining remarkably light, and is capable of absorbing far stronger impacts than traditional carbon fiber due to its excellent surface-volume ratio. This has allowed the brand to increase the size of the original case somewhat, from 40mm x 48mm to 40mm x 50mm.



Powering this new beast is the Caliber RM022, a manual winding tourbillon movement with hours, minutes and dual time zone on a transparent sapphire crystal disc, which comes into view when suspended above the light colored field located at 3 o’clock. It also hosts a power reserve indicator (70 hours) between 11 and 12 o’clock, a torque indicator that shows the main spring’s internal tension and a function selector to show the watch’s state in each of the positions for winding, neutral and handsetting. In spite of all of that this is still, in my opinion anyway, one of the more legible of the Richard Mille timepieces.
Pricing estimate: expect to pay well into six figures, probably around the $250k – $300k mark, assuming you can get your hands on 1 of the 5 pieces to be made.


For more information please be sure to visit the official Richard Mille website: www.richardmille.com