PUW 360

Description

In 1963, the Pforzheimer Uhrenrohwerke launched their caliber series 360/1360, which differed from the previous series 260/1260 in the balance system and in the main plate, which is now more service friendly divided into two parts.

This movement was produced in different versions, with different types of shock protections (in the archive, there are versions with Incabloc, KIF Ultraflex and Rufasuper) and different numbers of rubies (by using more or fewer cap jewels).

The probably most common version is that with the Incabloc shock protection. On this image, you can see the preparations for the cap jewels, which were needed for the 21j version.

The base plate of this modern movement is well made, even the mainspring barrel is ruby beared.

On the specimen shown in detail in this article, there’s the rare Rufasuper shock protection used. The gears run in their familiar 17 jewels, two of them (for both bearings of the escape wheel) act as cap jewels.

The directly driven center minute wheel is located under its own bridge.

The other parts of the gear train are typical for the 1960s: Third wheel, directly driven center seconds wheel and escape wheel.

In contrast to the 260/1260 series, we have a modern three-leg anular balance. Additionally, the hairspring stud is now moveable.

The beating rate is with 18000 A/h still low, and the adjustment is done by a prolonged hairspring key with little hole at the end, into wich a tool can engage. Technically, this is more or less equal to a long regulator arm.

A speciality of this movement is, that the ratchet is located on the inner side of the gear train bridge.

While the earlier versions of the 360 series used parts of the 260 series (three-quarter bridges, but they already had drillings for the two-part bridge), the later versions of the 360 series used the setting lever spring of the later caliber series 460/1460. With that, PUW could always re-use older stock parts for their lates movements and save money. This was really economical!

According to the demands of the consumers, different shock protections were used, and who for example wanted to print “21 Jewels” on the dial, got a number of cap jewels, even on the dial side.

Technical data

Usage gallery