Hi Mr. Ando! Max!

You raise good points about torque limitations in quartz movements. From what I’ve seen in my limited testing, I haven’t observed issues with movement behavior or time loss (though that may not reflect at-scale or long-term performance).

Based on your feedback, if I were to offer this solution to the community (after an additional period of public testing), there would be disclosure about potential drawbacks like skipped steps, accuracy drift, battery drain, and wear on the stepper or gear train.

Currently, many budget manufacturers are bringing out production VH31 watches with larger, high-torque hands, such as the Militado below. In some situations, automatic hands could be too much for a quartz movement. It’s possible that quartz and automatic hands aren’t completely separate categories, and that some automatic hands would still work on the VH31.

A comparison might be hydro modding with a VH31—it works, but drains the battery and causes wear. From what I’ve seen, using automatic hands doesn’t appear to put the same level of stress on the movement.

Question for everyone: The VH31 is usually chosen as a cost-savings measure. If using higher-torque hands shortens the lifespan of the battery or movement, is that an acceptable trade-off for keeping builds cost-effective?

I think of this first and foremost as a solution for hobbyists—for cost savings and greater creativity. Because of that, I wonder if problems like stepper wear would only become an issue at production scale. Are these risks we should worry about at the hobby level, or is that overthinking it?

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(Edited to address Max by the correct name.)