• Carbon Composite
    Dive Series 1000
    (First Generation)

  • Carbon Composite
    Dive Series 1000
    (Generation 2)

  • Carbon Composite
    USMC Dive Series

    1010

  • Stainless Steel
    Dive Series 2000
    (First Generation)

  • Titanium Field
    Series 3000

PROPRIETARY ILLUMINATION TECHNOLOGY

ProTek Watch works with the world leader in luminous compounds for their unsurpassed and superior self-powered illumination system called Trigalight. As the Managing Partner for Time Concepts, Barry Cohen has a long history of working closely with this firm dating back to 1989 when he approached their CEO about acquiring the rights to use this special illumination technology that had been primarily used for military applications until then. Cohen and Richard Timbo (his founding partner) wanted to create a watch brand to solve the problem of seeing time easily and clearly in darkened environments, and this superior lume technology provided the solution when added to timepieces.

After 27 years with Luminox, Cohen eventually exited his former brand and developed other watches for a while, but yearned to get back to making the type of watches he loved and made for most of his career, and to the category he and Timbo brought to the consumer arena en masse. As a result, he has now jumped back into his lane with the ProTek brand of watches that of course incorporates the same stellar illumination technology.

The Illumination Production Process

It should be noted that ProTek goes through all the customary steps any other watch company must go through to develop a watch for sale on the open market. But we also implement other steps needed to incorporate use of tritium gas tubes that conventional watches do not have to deal with. This work is done in a laboratory in Switzerland.

SELF-POWERED ILLUMINATION

This clip shows the process used to develop the finished micro tubes. The process begins with larger diameter hollow borosilicate glass tubes that are heated and drawn down to micro diameters as small as 0.3 mm. The tubes are cut to precise lengths with a C02 laser for a clean smooth cut of the tubes. The next step is to line the inner walls of the tubes with a glue and then fill the borosilicate glass micro tubes with a phosphor that adheres to the glue on the inner walls of the tubes. Then the tubes are filled with tritium gas (H3, heavy hydrogen), under a vacuum condition since the vacuum allows for more H3 to fill the tubes, which will then enable the tubes to glow brighter and longer. This essentially shows how this process transforms energy into light!

This clip shows the use of self-powered micro gas tubes in watches and how this works when compared to watches with no lume at all or with more conventional photoluminescent compounds like Superluminova that require light to excite and "charge" the painted surface for it to give back a glow that will need to be re-charged with another light source hitting the painted surfaces again for them to glow again. Photoluminescent performance varies depending on the material used and the thickness of the material application, but they all need to be "charged" by an external light source, whereas ProTek Watch lume will glow on its own for decades.

Trigalight / ProGlo lume tech is completely safe!

After reading about and viewing the videos in the above presentation, one can see that using tritium micro gas light capsules in watches actually improves them, as it allows for reading time in any and all light conditions, including no light at all, complete darkness. This is truly an enabling technology, and while it is a nuclear technology it is completely safe and there is no harm to come from watches that have this lume tech built into them, only benefits.

This ProGlo illumination is a nuclear technology that is highly regulated to ensure safety. Wearers should take comfort knowing there are many regulations in place to ensure safety and it should not be a cause for any concern.

Here are comparable examples of exposure to radiation we face in everyday life. As you can see we take radiation into our bodies every day in our daily lives, and in the cases cited below it would be far less if we actually ingested a complete watch!