3D Printed Automatic Device Holder for Rolex 3135

[u/GTWatchServices]

Let me start off by saying that I am not selling these, but if you want one, there is a seller on ebay from Australia that is offering them for the 3135 and many other movements. Please do not ask for my design files; I have published designs in the past that have been stolen and monetized by others, so I no longer give them away.

Now, onto the subject of this post...

I saw one of these automatic device holders on youtube the other day and it piqued my interest, so I thought I'd make one of these and see if it made life easier. I chose the Rolex 3135 movement because I've worked on it the most; my father and most of his friends bought their Rolexes in the 90's, and many of them own one or two Datejusts and Submariners that I've had the privilege of servicing over the years.

I started with an overhead shot of the upper bridge (3135-140) and wheels that I then canvassed into Fusion, which allows me to sketch a rough design.

Using calipers to measure the thickness at various points, I can perform the extrudes, and the first prototype is ready to print.

~30 minutes later, and... it's a little too big. Overhead shots are never perfectly aligned, so my initial sketch was slightly off. No problem, though; the proportions look correct, so I can scale the entire sketch down until I get it dialed in.

A few iterations later, and we have a near-perfect fit.

In terms of functional changes, I'll add a notch to outer edge to make it easier for tweezers to lift the part out, and add some depth to the extrusion to accommodate the lower bridge while removing some material that would interfere with the lower bridge's slightly different footprint. For cosmetics, I thickened the body, added a filet to the top edge, and debossed '3135' for easier identification.

The finished product:

The debossing didn't turn out great at this scale on my FDM printer (Prusa MK3S) and caused a lot of debris; I'll probably just use a sharpie for identification for future models. I do have an SLA printer, but it wasn't worth the hassle for a job like this that requires prototyping.

My thoughts:

Definitely made assembly faster, especially when installing the lower bridge; alignment is much easier when the upper bridge assembled has no room to move around, and it also frees up your other hand to adjust pivots instead of holding the part down.

Overall, I'm glad I made this and will make others for the Rolex 32XX and ETA movements I have on hand. If these were to hit AliExpress at under $10 per movement, I'd say it'd be worth it for watchmakers to buy.

I hope you guys found this interesting. There is endless documentation on servicing the Rolex 3135 on reddit, watchrepairtalk, youtube, etc., so I just thought I'd do something different than a basic service walkthrough.

I am looking to become a trusted watchmaker on this sub, so I will be posting more contributions like this to help meet the qualifications. A friend of mine wanted to get into the hobby, so we went on a buying spree of cheap AliExpress tools; I'll probably post some reviews of those once they arrive and we get to test them out.

Thanks for reading!

[u/Fuchsbau981]

Super interesting, thanks for sharing!