If you can’t decide between white gold, yellow gold or rose gold when putting on your watch, Audemars Piguet now has an alternative for you: polychrome gold, a kind of camouflage motif made from all three precious metals. The new material will initially be presented in the form of a prototype of the Royal Oak 34 mm at the ‘Seek Beyond: Shaping Materials’ exhibition in Milan, which starts on 3rd of June.
Following the Swiss manufacture’s presentation of a new model with multicoloured ceramic at the beginning of the year, the Audemars Piguet R&D teams have now developed and patented a new precious metal mixture. This is so-called polychrome gold, which – just like the multicoloured ceramic – was produced using the Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) process, which allows the sintering time to be reduced from several hours to just a few minutes.
To create the camouflage-like pattern, the different precious metals are melted separately and the droplets atomised into powder. The different powders are then placed in a circular graphite mould to create the desired motif. The mould is then heated and simultaneously subjected to mechanical pressure on both sides, which enables rapid sintering. This creates a disc that brings out the different shades of gold.
The various parts are then pre-polished and pre-matted and then finished by hand to obtain the alternation of satin-finished and polished bevels. The multi-coloured gold discs can be used for the case, bezel, dial or even bracelet links.
