Italian luxury brand Panerai has entered into an agreement with the American steel company IperionX to produce a new series of luxury Swiss replica watches with 3D printed titanium cases, this time obtained from recycled materials using patented HAMR technology.
Panerai is a rather interesting brand within the Swiss holding company Richemont S.A., one of the world’s largest luxury goods manufacturers. She also owns such well-known brands as Cartier, Montblanc, Chloe and Piaget, plus a joint venture with Ralph Lauren. Panerai, on the other hand, began its journey in the mid-19th century with the production of marine fake watches wholesale and sights. One of the company’s know-how is luminescent dials and radium-based sights, which appeared in 1915. By the Second World War, the company became the official supplier of the Royal Italian Navy and produced one of the first specialized 1:1 US replica watches for scuba divers, and after the war turned into a luxury brand, working closely with Rolex. Actually, the filling in this watch is Swiss, but Italian designers are responsible for the design. And yes, the highly radioactive radium was eventually abandoned in favor of the safer tritium-based Luminor.
What innovations can Panerai boast in the new century? Of course, additive technologies. To be fair, 3D printed high quality copy watches have been produced before, but are still quite rare. Cheap Panerai replica watches plans to sell not just timepieces with 3D printed cases, and not just from titanium, but from recycled metal in powder form, obtained through IperionX’s patented HAMR (Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction) process.
IperionX is an American steel company that has taken on the production of powders for injection molding and additive manufacturing from recycled materials – mainly chips left over from the machining of titanium blanks. The proprietary process makes it possible to remove oxides and obtain powders of pure metal and alloys of high purity and various fractions. At the same time, IperionX is developing deposits in Tennessee: proven reserves of titanium and rare earth elements should be enough to produce approximately sixty and a half thousand Boeing-787 airliners and twenty-four million electric vehicles.
The partners have already produced an experimental batch of 3D printed titanium cases and carried out metallographic studies. Apparently, everything is ready for the production of a new series of luxury fake watches online with the start of sales next year. How much such a pleasure will cost has not yet been reported, but for example, we can take the first Panerai project using additive technologies. Last year, the brand launched a titanium watch called the Luminor Marina DMLS (pictured above). The abbreviation at the end directly indicates the production method – 3D printing technology by selective laser sintering of metal powder compositions (Direct Metal Laser Sintering, DMLS). This offer is available to connoisseurs of expensive China super clone watches for 14.5-16 thousand euros.