03/10/2024
- SENSITIVE CONTENT -
Major brands accustomed the world to « Sapphire » crystal as the reference for the modern tool-watch. It is indeed a strong crystal and doesn’t scare scratches.
However, LAVENTURE Watches are made as tools.
This is why Polymethyl methacrylate (Known as PMMA, Plexiglas, Hesalite or Acrylic glass) makes all sens. It’s lighter, have less reflection, these reflections are more aesthetic, by it’s flexibility it is more resistant to strong impacts, it is made in Switzerland, the Plexiglas Superdome is genuinely “vintage”.
When you touch a sapphire crystal and then a PMMA crystal you can feel the difference of warmth but of textures also : Making it alive.
PMMA is used when tough conditions appears : aircraft windscreen, racing car windscreen, ski-lift cabin windows, airplane hublots, military aircraft canopy, visor of astronaute’s helmet, cars optics and many others that can confirm the toughness of this material.
Rumors say that during the watch selection process of Nasa, they required shatterproof crystals for their watches because it doesn’t shatter upon impact. A vital safety feature in space.
On earth, if it breaks, it will not spread out in a thousand sharp flakes all around and damage the dial, the hands, the disc date or maybe the movement as a sapphire crystal would have probably done, without forgetting that the user can hurt itself as well.
Scratches ? No problem, you can easily remove them with some Polywatch® and a microfiber.
And no, the PMMA will not turn « Yellowing » with time. It doesn’t happen anymore, we are in 2024.
One more thing : PMMA is cheaper to produce than Sapphire, easier to replace and mostly less energy-consuming during the production. According to a study from Scientific Visual SA, the sapphire crystal production can represent 88% of the carbon footprint for one watch production in certain case. 70% of the sapphire wold production comes from Asia.
These are the reasons of LAVENTURE’s choice.
