Introduced at Baselworld in 2016, the R150 “Mecano” was designed to compete with the ETA 2824-2. It is .2 mm thinner and although sized similarly it is not a drop-in replacement. As of 2016, the company was said to have capability to produce 100,000 units annually, with components produced in Switzerland and Thailand and final assembly in Ticino, Switzerland.
Cal. R150 includes both hand winding and bi-directional automatic winding using an unusual pawl-based reverser. It also includes a hacking seconds feature. The Nivaflex mainspring provides 40 hours power reserve at 28,800 A/h.
Ronda places Cal. R150 in their “Mecano Series 100” family of movements, but as of 2020 there are no other movements in this family.
R150 Applications
Cal. R150 is rarely seen in the market as of 2020.
Shinola uses Ronda movements for all of their quartz models and announced an automatic model, the Lake Erie Monster, powered by Cal. R150 in 2018.
Ronda R150 Operation
The movement can be manually wound with the crown in position 1. Rotate the crown clockwise to wind the mainspring.
The date wheel is advanced with the crown in second position (one notch out). Turn the crown counter-clockwise to advance the date wheel by one day.
The time is set with the crown in third position (pulled all the way out). Rotate the crown clockwise to advance the minute and hour hands and counter-clockwise to turn them backward.