Dafuq are you supposed to do with this shit? There are hundreds of movements that have been "open sourced" due to patents expiring; plenty of them have shop drawings available. The issue is the people who want watch movements to be "open source" have neither the tooling nor the skill to actually.... you know... make watch movements. I mean look. Here's a 6497 in Solidworks. Apparently Weiss thought you could use that to, you know, like, make 6497s. He bought a Fanuc Robodrill and a Tornos Swissnano based on that assumption (that's $400k worth of machine tools for those keeping track at home). And then he discovered that really it's someone's best guess as to what a 6497 looks like. And even if it's perfect if you don't nail a dozen different things it won't even tell time. And that set him back... a while. Not that he didn't lie about it. This shit is fucking hard to do. You learn that when you take them apart. If you really want to get fancy about it, you take apart a lot of them and measure. What I discovered from taking apart four tongji is that you can have a full-bore micromachine shop and your yields are still 10-20%. I've taken apart things hella more advanced than anything I'll ever be kitted up for and they simply don't work. Frickin' Richard Mille's yields are like 60% and those things sell for an average of $150k. I haven't spent two months negotiating for a 30-year-old Kern because I'm an elitist prick, I did it because it's the only way to get something capable of holding a micron for less than $150k. Am I going to "open source" anything I do? You know what? Fukkit if I ever make a movement I'll publish the goddamn drawings because the barrier to entry isn't the knowledge it's the fucking tools. 'cuz yeah - you can make a watch movement with your bullshit Boley sewing machine motor and some riffler files but you can't make one in less than weeks and you know what? "things that fit in your palm that skilled artisans slaved over for weeks" is hipster hate-bait par excellence.
Which is probably why they're trying to raise like 240,000 CHF to sell some watches at 30k each probably to get the machining tools. Seriously idk how much you explored that site, but somewhere they said they were going to do a short run of their first 10 watches at 30k each, and needed at least 8 backers to reach 240k to be able to move forward with financing the project. Doubt they'll reach that, but people are crazy. It's like a fancy, overproduced kickstarter. But, while I think there are certainly some bits that are useless and have some major red flags, adding to knowledge I don't think hurts anything. It may give people ideas on how to tinker more. New viewpoints they hadn't considered. Now I'm sure there's not crazy amounts of innovation happening in watchmaking everyday, but I mean even a bunch of Ochs und Junior use a base ETA movement with a little tampering. It only takes one brilliant mind to see something new and tinker. And even though I literally just said "I'm sure there's not crazy amounts of innovation happening" there have to have been some pretty good advancements since whatever patents expired and became "open-source" though I must admit I don't keep on top of all the horological advancements happening. I have no idea how long a horological patent lasts, but Omega loves to jack themselves off over their great co-axial escapement that seemingly is a bit better. I'd say the anti-magnetic bits are important on their innovation too but I think a large part of that is silicon balance springs over metal. Yeah the open source movement thing is supposed to be about making a more accessible movement that people can create at home or some bullshit, and essentially no one will do that, but it has potential to at least play games with ETA and Sellita. Maybe if you continue to not hear back from them, you can start using these things instead of whatever old expired patent you feel like.The issue is the people who want watch movements to be "open source" have neither the tooling nor the skill to actually.... you know... make watch movements.
I didn't see the PDF. I made it as far as checking out their Facebook page and discovering they've been basically stuck for two years. They've got like three guys there who did serious time at APRP. They should be able to do this no problem- I mean frankly, they could give their drawings to any of their former employers (Parmigiani Fleurier, JLC, APRP) and get whatever they wanted quickly. It's a really weird scam - APRP makes a goodly percentage of the bizarro hotrod stuff out there yet they're going for a 13 1/2 ligne, hand-wound small seconds with calendar. That's big, by the way - 7750 big. You're looking at about $200 retail for the same thing only smaller from Sellita. If you're going to use that movement for anything you're pretty much going with a Seagull St8000 case. In which case go with an ST8000 'cuz it's got a tourbillon. The lack of innovation here is formidable: the size is weird (it's a small pocket watch), the complications are negligible, the beat rate is used pretty much only by the Omega coaxial escapements and the bridge is fiddly and weak. I honestly don't get it. O&J used ETA because they don't care about the movements. They recently switched to Ulysse Nardin because UN wants to be friends with Ludwig Oechslin again and he had a hand in most of their designs. Omega loves their coaxial escapement because they bought it from George Daniels, who said it never needed lubrication, but it does. And here's the thing: at 13 1/2 ligne nothing fits. No modules, no cases, no crystals. There's nothing practical about this. At all.