Hi & a puzzle?

[BobbyP]

Hi everyone and thank you for accepting me. I'm a teacher and recently got into watches, I'm about to turn 50 and treated myself to a nice watch. I got a Momentum Torpedo Pro Eclipse - Solar [44mm]. But it stops working whenever I wear it!! Take it off and set it down, works fine, put it on stops after 15-30mins????? Momentum sent me a replacement but I'm curious why this would be. Any ideas? 

[oldhippy]

There are a few people that have static in there body all the time. I'm not saying this will put it right for all but a small round plaster stuck on the back of the watch, so between you and the watch no direct contact sometimes works. So give it a go and let us know. 

[RichardHarris123]

Hello and welcome from Leeds, England.

[Nucejoe]

Hi and welcome to the WRT forum.

 We all are Mr STATIC,  Oops I sure hope your students don't read this .  lol

 As we walk specially if one drags his foot on the ground/ carpet..... etc . We collect static electricity in the capacitor our body is, as our body  contains many  elements which charge no $ fee to host charged electrons. 

Rgds

 

 

 

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 hours ago, oldhippy said:

There are a few people that have static in there body all the time. I'm not saying this will put it right for all but a small round plaster stuck on the back of the watch, so between you and the watch no direct contact sometimes works. So give it a go and let us know. 

I've heard about this before, I dont think it was static related though, something else going on in the body. I was permanently static charged as a kid, my dad constantly getting me in a headlock and rubbing his knuckles on my head .

[HectorLooi]

2 hours ago, oldhippy said:

There are a few people that have static in there body all the time.

I'm one of those. I have an extremely low skin resistance and at those funfair strength testers where you grip two metal rods to test your "strength", all I have to do is lay one finger on each rod and the meter goes off the scale, the lights and alarms all go off.

I recently changed a new pair of sneakers and the insulation must be really good because I store up a charge very quickly and touching anything that is grounded will give me a slight tingle. And this is in Singapore, where it's so humid that static electricity hardly ever builds up.

But coming back to the watch, I don't think static electricity can affect the electronics as the metal watch case acts as a shield.

The possible explanations I can think of for the puzzling problem is

1) Temperature - it could be your body heat is causing a bad solder joint or contact point open the circuit. You test this by heating up your watch in an oven or with a hairdryer. 

2) Movement - it could be a loose contact that opens when jarred around.

3) Gravity - it could be a loose contact that comes open when the watch is no flat on its back.

[BobbyP]

Thank you everyone. If the cause was static wouldn't that effect other watches? I've never encountered this before. 

HectorLooi's 3 reasons sound plausible. Sounds like it would be repairable.

Many thanks