Rebellion Timepieces have created a work of art in the 540 Magnum Tourbillon which features a sapphire crystal case that pushes the art of watchmaking to extreme limits. The timepiece took 47,600 minutes of diamond grinding, that is 99 business days, to extract the eight elements that make up the case of the 540 Magnum Tourbillon from specially cut sapphire blocks. In this instance the watch case itself is as expensive as the movement i.e. the tourbillon caliber REB T-14.
It took 99 days to machine and polish the extraordinary case which excludes the hours devoted to conceiving and verifying whether it would be feasible at all, one step after the other. The colossal task was made possible by simulation using a computer and advanced 3D software especially reprogrammed for the job on hand.
Sapphire is transparent, but it is also very hard and brittle. Not many materials are so hard to work on. In this project, the lifespan of a burr with a diamond tip, the only material able to get the better of sapphire and grind it down, was somewhere between four and thirty minutes.
