Richard Mille creates another icon in the making

Following the success of the iconic RM 010 Automatic, Richard Mille continues to craft a new iteration destined to become another icon of the future: The RM 67-01 Automatic Extra Flat

With the newly unveiled RM 67-01 Automatic Extra Flat, Richard Mille has gone through the challenge of the mechanical aspect of creating a thin automatic, and of combining this type of movement design with the creation of a sense of visual depth within the movement. The extreme use of skeletonisation in the RM 67-01 carries many clues in this respect.

The numerals in this new model have been created from solid metal and mounted on two linked and rigid titanium rails attached directly to the movement. To increase the sensation of depth, each numeral has been sculptured out of solid metal and filled with Luminova® in order to provide easy night-time viewing, a first for the brand in this category of watches. The vertical date window, now moved to the right side of the dial at 5 o’clock, is also enclosed in a window broadly outlined with Luminova®.

The automatic movement CRMA6 created for the RM 67-01 is a new calibre of only 3.6mm thickness, designed in house by the engineers in Les Breuleux. The baseplate and bridges have been created from grade 5 titanium and finished with a combination of gray and black electroplasma treatment, with a winding rotor weight in platinum. The back of the movement continues the extra attention to creating a sense of depth with extensive skeletonisation visible everywhere, including the large open worked winding barrel, rotor, going train and automatic winding mechanism bridges.

At the heart of the movement’s structural design is the use of involute profiles for the entire going train, instead of the standard cycloidal shaped teeth as normally used in watchmaking. Such profiles can be found in transmissions of cars and many highly efficient motors of all kinds; however their use in the field of watchmaking is rare and exceptional. Such teeth profiles allow for a more efficient transfer of energy through the going train, thus providing superior chronometric results.

Between 1 and 2 o’clock, the function indicator for Winding, Date and Hand setting can be seen. Meanwhile, the case of this new icon in the collection represents the first time that the inimical tonneau shape has been created in an extra flat form, making it the most sleek model of the tonneau shaped Richard Mille timepieces. Its refined dimensions require more time to create than other similar cases in the collection, not counting weeks of preliminary preparation such as the 68 different stamping operations required for the bezel, caseband and back bezel.

Proving a meticulous and rigorous processing to finish off a piece, the new RM 67-01 promises its wearer a legendary watch that boasts one of the most time consuming and complex cases that has been made in Switzerland as of yet.