Cermet is a composite material made by combining a ceramic with a metal. The metal binds a ceramic such as an oxide, boride or carbide. In watchmaking, Rado uses a cermet that is about 90% titanium carbide. The carbide gives hardness, and the metal binder gives stiffness.
How is cermet made?
Cermet is made by pressing a metal and a ceramic together, then sintering them. In the finished material, the metal forms a matrix. This is the continuous body that holds everything in place. Ceramic particles are spread all through it. The result is tough and resists heat. That makes cermet useful well beyond watches. In industry, cermets take the place of tungsten carbide in saws and other brazed tools.
How does Rado use cermet?
Rado’s first watch in a ceramic-metal material was the Sintra, in 1993. At that stage the material could not be injection moulded, so the parts were pressed. In 2011 Rado found a way to injection mould it. The brand calls this version Ceramos. Rado describes Ceramos as a further development of hardmetal. Compared with hardmetal, the brand says, Ceramos resists scratches better and weighs much less. The material is mostly titanium carbide ceramic, held together by a metal alloy binder.
Where it comes from
The word joins the start of ‘ceramic’ with the start of ‘metal’. It was first recorded between 1950 and 1955. The United States Air Force is credited with coining it. Work on the material goes back further. During the Second World War, German scientists made oxide-based cermets to replace alloys. Today the same basic idea, a metal binding a ceramic, runs from workshop tools to watches.
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