Urofa 52

Description

!929, the german Urofa (Uhren-Rohwerkefabrik AG Glashütte) released their first pallet-lever movement, the caliber Urofa 52 with a diameter of 8 3/4 lignes.

Of course, it was well made, and in its best versions, all important bearings contained rubies, which were framed by hand. The 15 jewel version was the second-best one, only surpassed by the 16 jewel version, which was exclusively made for Tutima.

On its successor, the Urofa 522, the jewels were framed machinally.

The gear train, which uses a few imported parts from Switzerland is conventionally made, with directly driven center minute wheel, third wheel, decentral seconds wheel at 6 o’clock and finally the steel escape wheel.

The two-leg screw balance beats with 18000 A/h, which can be adjusted by a long regulator arm and a scale on the balance cock. It regulates a swiss pallet lever escapement.

As noted above, the jewels had to be framed manually, which was expensive and time-consuming, so that this movement got very low production figures (25.000 items).

The Urofa 52 shown here is neither marked on the dial side nor on the movement side, but could be identified because of its distict shape of the setting lever spring.

The yoke winding system was used on “better” watches at the time being, and the lack of a shock protection was absolutely normal then.

In the lab

Timegrapher result

Almost 100 years old, lots of visible wear and an unfixed balance plateau make it no wonder, that the timegrapher result is really poor.

Technical data

Usage gallery