Orient's Caliber 46

Orient's 46 family of automatic movements is perhaps the best-documented piece of this brand's history. This probably owes to both the importance of the 46, and to its extremely long life spanning all the way from 1971 until… well, pretty much today, actually!

So while there's not a lot I can write about factually that hasn't already been written and posted before by watch historians, this blog cannot be complete without offering the story of cal. 46, with some added personal perspective.

Origin

Throughout the first two decades of its existence, Orient used numerous mechanical movements. We've covered some of those on the blog, like the T-Type, N-Type, and L-Type. At some point, management must have realized that adopting one architecture and sticking with it, would be more profitable and allow them longer-term planning.

So, Orient turned to the Seiko, their older, bigger neighboring watchmaker, to source some know-how and designs. It has been said that Seiko at the time believed their future lies in the newly introduced quartz movement, and so they figured making a little extra money off of an aging technology made sense.

Orient happily licensed Seiko's latest movement, caliber 7006 (Seiko mechanical movement engineers apparently kept working arduously despite any mocking grins from fellow quartz people!). They added Seiko's old and proven Magic Level winding system and, hey presto, caliber 46 was born.

 

Iterations

During its five decades of production, the movement went through numerous updates, and spawned many variations. These variations offered different dial layouts, additional "complications", and occasional changes to the main plate and bridges, required to accommodate the various new parts.

Some of the functions presented with cal. 46 versions included Power Reserve indicators, World Time indication, 24-hour hands and AM/PM indicators, and more. Some versions included the day, the date, both – or none.

The top-level versions, used in Orient Star Royal and Royal Orient, such as the 46L, 46M, and 46T, were equipped with hand-winding and second-hand hacking. These were also regulated to a higher accuracy of +10/-5 seconds per day, compared to the usual +25/-15 of the regular caliber 46.

The following table contains the different versions of caliber 46.

 

Key Models

It's impossible to list all the significant watches released by Orient with caliber 46 inside. But here are a few highlights…

Orient HiAce, or HA, was one of earliest product lines using caliber 46 (as well as the similar spec cal. 48). Many versions of Orient HA were produced between the early to mid-1970s, offering a great variety of designs.

Another line of watches that's been around since the early 1970s is the SK (Sea King or Super King, depends on who you ask). This was the 46-based heir to Orient's earlier divers (World Diver and King Diver).

The ever so popular Orient "President" or "Day Date" Rolex homage was also a member of the family – specifically the 46E variant, with its full-weekday display.

In 2004 Orient launched its highly successful line of divers, with the release of the Mako and Ray. Both used caliber 46943.

In 2011, Orient paid tribute to its historic movement with the release of the 469 40^th anniversary model. Two references were produced in limited numbers – one in stainless steel, and the other black coated.

And there were, of course many other significant releases. Like the EW00 series running Orient's first Power Reserve movement, cal. 46F; the first generation M-Force with its cal. 46G (and then, later generation); and so on, and so forth. Countless variations, in a line running more than forty years, an ongoing ode to a movement that might not have had the glory of Japan's foremost watches like Grand Seiko or Citizen Leopard, but made the Orient brand a staple of robust reliability.

 

Modern Reincarnations

Like all good things, the 46 lineage too had to come to an end. Perhaps, as no more letters were left in the alphabet (though they only reached the letter "Y" – there was no 46Z)… but more seriously, it was a case of an aging architecture that led to inefficient manufacturing.

In 2012, Orient began work on a new generation of movements, the 46-F6 (or "F6" for short). As the name hints, there was and still is much of the 46 heritage in the new movement. The F6, finally put to production in 2014, utilized the same barrel, third wheel, escape wheel, pallet fork, and balance wheel as the 46. However, Orient engineers produced a new modular "envelope" of plates and bridges that were designed to accommodate the different requirements of various complications without changes, resulting in more economical manufacturing.

Further updates to the movement led to the introduction of the 46-F7 in 2017 (with improved accuracy and power reserve, and even sharper decoration techniques), and the 46-F8 which finally saw the replacement of the aging cal. 46 steel balance wheel with silicon.

 

The top photo and table are copyright of the blog. The table includes info from of WatchManDan's list of Modern Orient Movements. Other photos in this post were taken from various sale ads.