Amplitude test results and service (3510.50)

In addition to the lift angler, we need to know if the watch was fully wound prior to the tests, and if the chronograph was running or not.

You raise an interesting point re: automatics with regard to wearing vs testing. The Omega website notes somewhere that winding an automatic 15 times prior to initial wearing is sufficient to allow normal activity to continue running the watch. But what about prior to putting on the timegrapher - 60 times or so?

The spec is "wind it fully"...😀

It will be a fairly modern machine if it's giving you amplitude. So most machines default to 52 degrees, and the lift angle for this movement is 51. This isn't a huge thing normally, but having the lift angle too high does skew the amplitude readings, and those are what concern me. So for every degree the lift angle is off, the balance amplitude will be off by about 6 degrees. In this case IF the lift angle was 52, then all your readings are actually about 6 degrees lower than what you show.

So your lowest amplitude is 215, so it would really be about 209. The thing is, the minimum balance amplitude that Omega allows 24 hours after full wind is 200 degrees in any position measured. If you are already as low as 209 (or even 215) at full wind, it is unlikely that 24 hours later you will be above 200. So this watch is not meeting Omega specs for balance amplitude, and amplitude is a measure of the health of the movement.

So although Dan is right when he says this:


If you paid a price for a movement that was meeting Omega specs, this one doesn't do that really, because of the amplitude, and also because the average rate is too low - it should fall between -1 and +11 for the Cal. 1143 and 3220 that are in the reduced.

So the question is how will these people service if it you send it back to them. Being a modular chronograph movement, many watchmakers don't service them at all, and many who do simply service the base movement and not the module. There is a mistaken belief that the module is only operating when the chronograph is running, and that's not the case at all - every hand on the dial that moves is part of that module, so the module is working all the time just the move the hour, minute and constant seconds hands. Servicing just the base movement is doing half the job.

Anyway, not sure what to tell you on how to proceed, but I would at least contact the seller and find out what they would do if you sent it back for service. But at least you know it's not what it should be, so your initial instincts were right.

Cheers, Al

Omega doesn't sell the modules. So when people say "Oh the module gets replaced at service" my question is always, where are these modules coming from?