Finally came in! Should I remove the protective plastics?

Archer

Thanks, but I am quite familiar with Delrin and it's properties. I've bought enough of it for conveyor wear strips in my years in engineering to make a million brakes for Speedmasters. I know watch collectors love to make a big deal of this being some very special plastic, but like all plastics it has a particular set of properties that make it either suitable or unsuitable for different applications.

For example for wear strips I found it more useful than UHMW-PE because it was less likely to absorb oils and change dimensions (expand) and that caused a lot of problems with jammed up conveyors. But in other applications, UHMW-PE was better. In engineering, it wasn't seen as anything special, just another option out of many available to you depending on what was needed.

To me the "Delrin" brake (along with the "Hesalite" crystal) is sort of the "904L stainless" of Omega. People read far too much into it...

JwRosenthal

Your statement of “ Delrin isn't anything special when it comes to plastics” just makes it sound like it’s no better than the plastic used in water bottles- whereas it is suited for specific engineering applications.

JwRosenthal

Just don’t want people thinking this was a “cost cutting” measure and because plastic was used in a watch movement, it’s “cheap”.

Archer

Or that they they both perform equally?

😉

JwRosenthal

That was simply the distinction I wanted to make. Your opinion carries a lot of weight here so I just wanted to clarify that the use of plastic in this application was a decision made based on the properties of that specific material and is not “lesser”.