Swiss fake IWC UK has been on a clear path over the last few years, playing it safe and smart with gradual improvements to popular models, and not too many surprises. This year, for instance, it was the turn of the brand’s World War II-inspired perfect replica IWC Big Pilot’s Watch, a famously large, retro design that’s been toned down to a more wearable and contemporary size.
That’s why the watch featured here—ostensibly also a IWC Big Pilot’s fake for men, but nothing like anything that’s ever borne that name previously—appeared with all the shock of a Spitfire diving out of the Sun.
As a design, it’s more F-22 than WWII dogfight, and much like Lockheed Martin’s latest, it’s packed with next-generation tech, including an outer case of Ceratanium, AAA replica IWC’s own ceramised titanium alloy. That means the strength and lightness of titanium with a surface that’s as hard and scratch-resistant as ceramic.
It’s what’s inside the case, however, that justifies the “XPL” in the watch’s name, which, it turns out, is shorthand for “experimental”. The conceptual starting point is an attempt to tackle the issue of shock impacts. Along with moisture ingress and magnetised parts, shocks are one of the principal causes of damage within mechanical watches. Swiss made replica IWC’s solution, named SPRING-g PROTECT, has been in development for the past eight years, and makes its debut in this piece.
Rather than being fixed to the inside of the Ceratanium case of the luxury fake IWC Pilots UK, the mechanical movement is held in place with a cantilever spring (the visible gold elements between the case and the dial), made from bulk-metallic glass, or BMG. An amorphous metal alloy with a disordered atomic structure, BMG is significantly more elastic than crystalline alloys, making it a more effective material for shock absorption.
To test its system, the brand turned to the Future & Shock Physics group at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, who used high-speed video and laser measurement to examine the effects of extreme shocks on the 1:1 copy IWC. These tests demonstrated the protected movement could withstand accelerations in force in excess of 30,000g, which, for high quality replica IWC, is roughly 3,300 more g-forces than an F-22 pilot will be subjected to.
Over-engineered? Perhaps. But Swiss movement fake IWC’s next challenge will be translating the technology for non-XPL, mainstream watches to come.