Oris is Back to Black with Dive Control Limited Edition

Oris returns to the deep with the Dive Control Limited Edition, an evolution of the independent
Swiss company’s high-performance ProDiver watch, made for professional divers. The watch has a 51mm case cast in lightweight Grade 2 titanium and coated in highly scratch-resistant black DLC. It features the Oris-patented Rotation Safety System, or RSS, a signature Oris device that securely locks the uni-directional rotating bezel in place during a dive. The new watch also features a 60minute chronograph counter at 12 o’clock, with key detailing in highly legible yellow. Only 500 will be made.

The Oris Dive Control Limited Edition was developed in partnership with Roman Frischknecht, a Swiss commercial diver who spends his working life deep underwater, servicing the subsea industry. Working with Roman, Oris developed the patented Rotation Safety System, or RSS, which features on every ProDiver and is designed to lock a watch’s diving bezel securely in place during a dive. This innovative device has become an Oris signature.

The watch has a number of features that elevate it above standard diver’s watches. First, it has an oversized 51 mm case that’s cast in lightweight, black DLC-coated Grade 2 titanium and that’s water-resistant to 100 bar (1,000 metres). In testing, Oris’s engineers actually pressure tested the Dive Control Limited Edition to an astonishing 125 bar to ensure it would perform in the most demanding conditions.

To maximise legibility, the dial is oversized, too. The bezel, complete with the RSS system, has a scratch and fade-resistant ceramic top ring. The hands, hour markers and zero marker on the bezel are all filled with Super-LumiNova. Oris’s designers have used high-contrast yellow details to indicate critical information because yellow is one of the most visible colours underwater.

It also has an automatic helium escape valve, a device useful to Roman and his colleagues who live in heliox atmosphere during a saturation dive. Helium atoms are smaller than atoms of oxygen and can enter a watch. Without the escape valve to release these particles, they could damage the watch once the diver reaches regular air pressure again

‘In the companies I work for, safety standards are high and the equipment very reliable. Commercial diving has become one of the most safetyconscious professions in the world,’ says Roman Frischknecht.
That might be hard to comprehend for those of us who work on terra firma, but when it comes to his work, Roman doesn’t deal in half-certainties. The safety of each member of the diving team is paramount. Their equipment is state-of-the-art, designed to keep them safe in extreme conditions and maintained regularly to ensure performs reliably.

Roman applied the same rigour to the development of the Oris ProDiver’s signature feature, the Rotation Safety System. Oris worked with Roman during two years of development to deliver a uni-directional rotating bezel (a device used to measure dive time) that can be locked securely into place during a dive. So critical is time measurement and management in every aspect of diving, that there is no room for error. By locking a bezel in place, he can be sure of exactly how much time he has left on his dive.

Oris has patented this innovation and the Oris ProDiver is the only watch in the world to carry the function. ‘A uni-directional rotating bezel is a great tool, but if it doesn’t move once it’s fixed, it gives a diver extra peace of mind when timing a dive’, explains Roman.

In addition, the watch’s Swiss Made automatic chronograph movement gives it central seconds, 30-minute and 12-hour chronograph hands. The 30-minute chronograph hand has a yellow counterbalance that reads off against a yellow scale, extending it to a full 60-minute display. This way reading as well as calculation errors can be avoided and safety thus increases. For a professional diver, this is exactly what comes first.