Resurrecting HYT: Fluid Mechanics and the Art of Reinvention

Here at the bottom of the world, we rarely get the opportunity to rub shoulders with watch brand executives.

In fact, the only thing we routinely rub on our shoulders in Australia is sunscreen in the summer. Apologies for that visual.  
We don’t get much in terms of watch culture in Australia. Unfortunately, it’s very rare that the top brass of a brand will venture all the way to the other side of the world to visit a market that, although growing, is inconsequential to their top line.

A few weeks ago, however, I found myself literally rubbing shoulders with HYT CEO Vahe Vartzbed at an Omakase restaurant just off Bourke Street in Melbourne. Vahe was in town for a collector dinner, and I was able to take him out for lunch the day before. Vahe, my colleague Oliver and I sat three abreast at Nori Maki on a cold August afternoon, drank sake and spoke watches. The food was great, the company was better. It was a surreal experience and reminded me of Hodinkee’s early Talking Watches episodes. Casual, insightful and personal. I still get a little star struck when I meet prominent figures in the watch industry, and this was no exception.

Vahe tells the story of HYT as one of rebirth, reputation and technical ability, but it’s also one of blood and innovation. This is a story about rebuilding a brand, doing right by customers and making cool shit. Settle in, this is a long one.

The Founding And Falling of HYT

Before we dive in to HYT’s liquid magic, it’s important to understand how the brand came to be, then almost went away forever.

HYT was founded in Neuchâtel by two gentlemen, Patrick Berdoz, a serial entrepreneur, and Lucien Vouillamoz a nuclear scientist and inventor. They wanted to indicate the time with liquids, something never before seen in horology, by pushing two different coloured fluids through a glass capillary. I’m all for ambition, but if someone had come to me with an idea to make a watch with glass tubes and glowing liquid on the dial, I would have promptly pushed them into lake Neuchâtel.

The technology the duo ended up developing, alongside their sister company Preciflex SA, worked not only in watches, but translated to the medical industry too. One of the team’s innovations was a device called the EZDRAW Blood Sampler, a needle free device that makes it easier to draw blood. Here’s a quote about the device.
 
"Setting a new standard for user-friendly blood collection. Tailored for professional and non-professional use, ezdrawTM is the first standard-
sized, multi-tube blood sampler with an authentication and real-time guidance companion app."

Firstly, if you’re a ‘non-professional’ you’re not coming anywhere near me with a blood taking device, needle or otherwise, secondly ‘multi-tube blood sampler’ is an incredible name for a band.

HYT’s first watch, the H1 Titanium Black DLC, equipped with its ‘Fluidic Module’, won the Innovation Watch Prize at the 2012 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). It was a positive start for a brand with such grand technical ambitions. Sadly, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2021 due to the financial pressure of COVID-19 that the whole industry felt. The assets were purchased by Kairos Technology Switzerland SA later the same year, who then made sure to honour all existing warranties and service requests. This is something Vahe made clear as we sipped on our Sake, the company not once left their collectors in the dark. It’s something he’s very proud of. Rightly so.  

Although HYT as it stands today is a very different company than it was the decade prior, their mission remains the same.

What Is The HYT Fluidic Module?

At the heart of every HYT watch is the Fluidic Module, the mechanism that converts mechanical horology to liquid time display. The brand’s patented module drives not only their technical timekeeping, but their overall philosophy too. It’s a complicated system, but when broken down, it’s easy to understand.

The Fluid

Arguably the most technical part of the Fluidic Module is the fluid itself. The meeting point of two different coloured liquids is used to indicate the hour around the periphery of the dial. It looks simple, but in practice, is anything but.

The field of fluid dynamics is one that has interested me ever since reading a biography on Leonardo da Vinci. Often thought of as the original master of water, Da Vinci explored the behaviour of liquid and appreciated its beauty as it flowed over and around objects. Although some of his motivations for this field of study were destructive, diverting the river Arno to cut off access to Pisa for example, there was immense beauty in his findings. Still today, the field of fluid dynamics is one full of unknowns, I’m not sure the true nature of water is something we will ever truly understand, but its beauty and immense power will always be an inspiration. HYT takes that beauty and uses it to display another one of Da Vinci’s obsessions. Time keeping.

One of the issues that the engineers and watchmakers had to overcome when creating the Fluidic Module is the inherent miscible (mixable) nature of liquid. This tendency to mix like a couple at a swingers party would make it impossible to have an accurate indication of the time. Both coloured liquids need to touch, but not mix, to give the wearer a sharp line where the hour is indicated. My first thought here would be to use oil and water, as famously they don’t mix, but this would bring with it all sorts of other complications. What HYT has opted for is two highly engineered liquids, one clear and one coloured. When injected side by side, they create an incredibly sharp meeting point. Leonardo would be astonished!

The Bellows

Operating like two barrels of a combustion engine, the bellows, with help from two internal pistons, push and pull the liquids through the 0.8 mm thick glass capillary to indicate the hour. Through the case back, the bellows look like polished cylinder heads off a vintage Triumph motorcycle, complete with fins used to transfer heat from the engine to the air. You can see the compression and expansion of these tiny components as time passes and fluid is expressed, then taken in. It’s unexpected and elegant.

When thinking in terms of fluid dynamics, like we touched on above, another issue arises that HYT had to work through. As we know, liquid tends to grow larger in volume as the temperatures rises, which is not ideal. To overcome this, a temperature regulation mechanism is placed inside one of the bellows that can counter the expansion and contraction of the liquid. This way, your hours don’t creep forward too quickly if it warms up.

The Glass Capillary

Connected to the bellows is the capillary. A 0.8 mm thick glass tube that is bent to insane tolerances using heat. When looking at it, you would think that the amount of liquid filling it would be substantial, but the channel the liquid travels through is incredibly thin. It looks bigger than it is due to refraction and the curve of the glass wall.
During assembly, the process of ‘priming’ or filling the capillary with fluid, can be compared to that of bleeding automotive brake lines. This is a simplistic comparison of course but an accurate one.

The two fluids must fill the capillary at exact quantities and with no air bubbles. Any air present adds an element of compression to the system that will wreak havoc on its accuracy. I can imagine this being an extremely frustrating process, and one that takes many years to master.

The Inverted Snail Cam

Ok, on to my favourite part, the variable snail cam. Stick with me here, this is a bit nerdy. There’s a slight variation in force required to move the fluid at the start of the cycle and at the end. So if the team at HYT were to connect the movement directly to the pistons, the hours would be slightly slow at the start of the cycle, and slightly fast at the end. It’s a bit like changing gears on a bike when you hit a hill.

This variation in force required presents a unique problem. Traditionally, your watch should be extremely consistent in its delivery of force along the duration of its cycle. This doesn’t work here. Instead of a direct connection, HYT has engineered an inverted snail cam (Think a normal snail cam from a retrograde seconds' complication, but inside out) that links the bespoke mechanical movement to the Fluidic Module.
Here’s how it works. Multiple sections of the snail cam can be adjusted to alter its geometry, and subsequently the force exerted on the piston within the bellows. This allows the watchmakers to fine tune the entire system without having to ‘re-bleed’ the module or disassemble the mechanical movement. Theoretically, and this is my assumption here, that also means you could have your watch adjusted to your local climate.

The Future of HYT

In the early days of the brand, all of this technology was shoehorned into watches that, to my taste, were far too big. But in this era, the ‘Vahe’ era as I’m calling it, they’ve managed to shrink it down to an entirely wearable 45.3 mm with the T1. Ok, I know that doesn’t sound ‘entirely’ wearable, but the lack of lugs here means that I’m entirely comfortable wearing it. Genuinely. Don’t let the numbers throw you off, as usual, they don’t tell the whole story.

There’s a sincerity and eagerness to Vahe that I noticed as we sat there munching on sashimi. He’s got a tough job. As CEO of a brand that has previously gone bankrupt, it must be difficult to be the one to bring the trust back. It’s not something that will happen overnight, it shouldn’t, and this is something he’s acutely aware of.

HYT and its technology is fascinating to me. Its Fluidic Module seemingly comes from a part of the brain that most people don’t have access to. The part that can come up with something entirely new and doesn’t rely on external reference or inspiration. It’s true creativity in its purest sense. If Vahe and the team can keep creating watches like the T1, and the recently released S1, I think they are well on their way to building a brand that people can love, wear and most importantly, trust for years to come. It’s early days, but if anyone can rebuild HYT into the visionary brand it deserves to be, it’s Vahe.

Cya in the next one. X