Metal lasts forever but never truly fits. Leather conforms to your wrist perfectly but cracks and dies. For decades, watchmakers accepted this compromise as fundamental physics. You picked durability or comfort, never both.
Designer: Ming Thein
Ming just eliminated that choice entirely. The independent watchmaker developed what appears to be the world’s first fully 3D-printed titanium bracelet, a single piece of grade 5 titanium comprising 1,693 individual links that flows like chain mail but wears like your favorite broken-in leather strap. No pins connect these links. No screws hold anything together. The entire structure, including the articulating buckle, prints as one piece.
“It’s a strap or a bracelet. We’re actually not terribly sure which,” Ming admits when describing the Polymesh.
One Piece, Zero Assembly Required
The manufacturing process sounds impossible until you watch Ming demonstrate the actual bracelet. A powder bed machine fuses microscopic grade 5 titanium particles layer by layer using precise laser sintering. “Unlike conventional mesh where each individual link is made separately and then joined together, all of our links are basically sintered together as one piece,” he explains while flexing the bracelet between his fingers. “Every link is printed without any post assembly.”
Ming collaborates with Sisma S.p.A in Italy and ProMotion SA in Switzerland for this manufacturing breakthrough. Grade 5 titanium already ranks among the hardest metals to machine conventionally. Printing from powdered titanium adds explosive danger to the complexity. The material must be processed in an inert gas environment because powdered titanium combusts violently when exposed to air.
The buckle presents an even stranger challenge. Traditional bracelets attach separately fabricated buckles using pins or screws. The Polymesh prints the entire buckle structure, including what Ming calls the “tuck system” clasp, the flexible articulation, the pin, and the hinge, as part of the original print run. Nothing gets assembled later. The bracelet emerges from the powder bed as a complete functional object requiring only quick-release spring bars to mount to a watch case.
Some internal clearances measure less than 70 microns. That’s approaching the resolution limit of what laser sintering can reliably achieve in titanium. The process involves several hundred layers of sintering, with finishing work required afterward to remove layer lines and surface imperfections so everything articulates smoothly.
The Problem Leather Couldn’t Solve
Ming frames the design challenge simply. “We always ask what if. What if we had a metal bracelet that really had the comfort of a leather strap, the flexibility and the pliancy and also the elasticity but without the transience?”
Anyone who wears watches understands that frustration. You find your perfect leather strap, the one that breaks in exactly right and develops character through wear. Then it dries out and cracks. You can’t buy another because the manufacturer discontinued it. You can’t stockpile multiples because they’ll deteriorate unworn, cracking and drying up over time until you’re back to square one.
Metal bracelets solve the longevity problem. They last decades without degradation. But they sacrifice the organic wearing experience. “Even in the best micro adjust systems, you still have to actively do something,” Ming notes. “It doesn’t comply and conform to the wrist in the same way that fabric or leather can.”
The Polymesh attacks both problems simultaneously by behaving like a hybrid material. It possesses what he describes as the rigidity and tensile strength of metal while moving more freely than either traditional bracelets or leather straps.
Seven Failed Experiments
The development process exposed just how unfamiliar this manufacturing territory was for the Ming team. They started with filament 3D printing for prototyping, creating rough approximations of the link structure using plastic. More than seven different topologies failed before they found a geometry that could both print successfully and achieve the right kinetic properties.
Scaling presented treacherous challenges. “The translation between a 5:1 model and even a 3:1 model is completely different to when you go to actual size,” Ming explains. What articulated smoothly at larger scales jammed or broke at final dimensions. The team had to essentially start over multiple times, learning through expensive failures how titanium particles behave when fused in these complex geometries.
Chain Mail Made From Laser Light
The visual appearance gives away its origins immediately. You can see the grainy texture inherent to additive manufacturing, each link displaying the subtle roughness of fused metal particles. “It almost looks like a woven fabric,” Ming says, manipulating the bracelet to show how it catches light. “It definitely feels like metal. It flows like a very, very heavy kind of chain mail.”
The tactile experience sits somewhere between textile and jewelry. The bracelet drapes with liquid weight but springs back when released. You can see the distortion waves travel through the link structure when he presses his fingers against it, the metal deforming and recovering like fabric under tension.
That fabric-like behavior extends to how it wears. Traditional bracelets, even sophisticated ones with micro-adjustment systems, require active manipulation throughout the day as your wrist swells and contracts. The Polymesh conforms passively, flexing to accommodate natural body changes without the wearer doing anything.
The Experience Nobody Can Photograph
Ming acknowledges the fundamental limitation of showing this bracelet through images or video. “To experience it, to understand it, it’s best to see it in person.” That’s not marketing speak. The Polymesh’s defining characteristic is how it moves, and static photography can’t capture kinetic properties.
Early reactions from people who handled the prototype describe it as unsettling in the best possible way. The cognitive dissonance of feeling metal move like fabric creates a sensory experience that breaks expectations. Your brain knows titanium shouldn’t behave this way, yet your hands feel it happening.
What Comes Next
Ming prices the Polymesh at CHF 1,500, available now in 20mm width through Ming and authorized retailers. A 22mm version is in development. The brand also plans a stainless steel variant, which might address some of the visual texture concerns if steel particles fuse more cleanly than titanium in this process.
This represents genuine invention rather than refinement of existing approaches. While 3D printing has found its way into watch cases and components, using it to create a fully articulated bracelet with integrated end links and a functional buckle printed as one piece pushes the technology into genuinely new territory. The Polymesh won’t replace traditional bracelets for people who prefer polished surfaces and conventional metal finishing. But for those willing to embrace visible manufacturing processes in exchange for wearing experiences that didn’t exist before, Ming just created something remarkable.
The post Ming Just Solved the Bracelet Problem Nobody Could Figure Out first appeared on Yanko Design.