The lockdowns of the pandemic allowed 78-year-old independent watchmaker and A.H.C.I. co-founder Vincent Calabrese a lot of free time to think out things he had been mulling over for years. Foremost among these his Calasys system, an escapement without a balance spring.
Calabrese filed the patent for it in September 2019 and finished prototyping it in August 2020. He officially introduced it at a talk he gave at VincenzaOro the late fall of 2021.
Vincent Calabrese Calasys escapement diagram
Our pals at The Watches TV visited Calabrese in his workshop to understand how the Calasys system works. The video shows exactly how it functions without the typical balance spring, using a different system involving a rack to deliver power to the escape wheel that is more uniform in its delivery and does not buckle or flex.
Calabrese made the rack-and-the spring system using nonmagnetic LIGA technology. The rack and spring move the ellipse, which in turn charges the pallet fork that leads directly to the escape wheel. “There’s nothing compromised by gravity, magnetization, shocks, or other things anymore,” Calabrese says in the video.
After introducing the Calasys, Calabrese talks about the highlights of his long, long career, a super-interesting walk down memory lane, including his stint at Blancpain, which, he relates, lasted only four years and resulted in 20 registered patents that were never used.
For more horological videos by The Watches TV, please visit www.watchestv.com.
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Such an intriguing and wonderful article, Elizabeth. The video from The Watches TV was excellent and it is incredible to hear Vincent’s story.