Casio Tough Movement for high shock resistance radio controlled solar watches

Casio announced the development of -Tough Movement, a movement for radio controlled solar watches that features a high shock resistance and a hand position correction function using LED. The new Casio Tough Movement combines metal and plastic parts in order to reduce the weight, while increasing the rigidity. It is designed in consideration of the shape and the position of each part, and the balance between the volume of metal and plastic parts. The Tough Movement can receive time calibration signals from six bases located in Kyushu area and Fukuoka in Japan, the US, the UK, Germany and China.

The positions of the hands are detected at 55’00″ of every hour and if the time indicated by the watch does not coincide with that of the time counter in the IC, the movement corrects the hand position. With the adoption of the “Quartzless Heterodyne Method,” which eliminates the need for a quartz filter for signal reception, Casio reduced the number of parts while maintaining the reception sensitivity.

With the use of the new movement, the thickness of the three-hand analog model is reduced by 2.26mm to 4.11mm, while that of the chronograph model is reduced by 0.55mm to 4.9mm. Casio plans to use Tough Movement for its Oceanus and G-Shock series. As the first stage, the company will combine the G-Shock “Giez” and Tough Movement and release it under the model name “GS-1200″ on Sept 30, 2008. The GS-1200 will be available at ¥42,000 ($388) in Japan.