The Movement Room

Every movement base by factory, one chart

By swissreptime · current as of September 2026

Fourteen factory names come up in a normal week of “which one should I get” threads. Behind those fourteen names sit about five workshops that actually make the movements. That gap is the whole piece.

Most factories on this list did not build the calibre in the watch. They bought it, sorted the good ones from the bad ones, regulated it, and put it in a case. So when two people argue about factory A versus factory B on the same reference, they are usually arguing about two copies of the same movement. The real difference is the case, the dial and the bracelet.

We have called each workshop a bench. The chart runs in three parts, split by which bench feeds it.

Part 1 — the Rolex factories

Part 2 — the Patek factories

Part 3 — AP, Richard Mille and Hublot

The two benches that carry the whole Rolex side

Dandong is a city, not a company. It sits in Liaoning province. It has been a movement town since the Liaoning Watch Factory opened there in 1957, and the clone calibres people call “Dandong” come out of that industry. No named, registered firm is attached to them. Shanghai Jinghe is the opposite: a real movement manufacturer, founded in 1995, based in Jiading, with a second plant in Xi’an. One supplier is a postcode. The other has a website.

Between them they cover almost every row in Part 1. Dandong built the 3235 that arrived around 2021 and the 3285 that reached the market in 2023, and Dandong builds the 4130 and 4131 that BT puts in the Daytona. Jinghe builds the VR32xx hybrids, the JH3235, the JH3285, and its own 4130 and 4131. Those are not the same movements as Dandong’s, even though the numbers match. On the Shanghai 4130 the balance bridge, pallet fork and escape wheel are not gen spec, and the beat adjuster and regulator point inwards where Dandong’s point outwards.

Same four digits, different watch. The number on a spec line tells you the design, not who made it.

The factories that use two benches are the interesting ones

ARF is the clearest example, and the row people get wrong most often. Everyone remembers ARF as the SH3135 factory, and fairly — it put the first serious clone 3135 into a Submariner in 2018, along with the first 904L case anyone had shipped. That Shanghai movement is still what sits in its 40mm and older builds. But its current 41mm 126xxx Subs run the DD3235. One factory, two benches. Which one you get depends on which reference you ordered.

QF does the same thing with a third bench on top. Its Datejust runs a Dandong 3235. Its free-sprung builds run Jinghe’s JH3235. Its Day-Date 40 runs the SH3255 V3 from Shanghai. The Datejust also comes with the most useful footnote in this chart: QF labels its movement DD3235, but people who have had both open say it does not look like the DD3235 that VSF gets. The finishing and the small details are different. Nobody has settled whether that is a lower batch, an older run, or something else. Read “DD3235” on a QF listing as a family name, not a serial number.

So one factory row is often more than one movement. Asking “which factory” and stopping there gives you less than you think.

VSF’s 3235 is exclusive, not in-house

People write about the VS3235 as if VSF machines it. It does not. The VS3235 is the Dandong 3235, supplied to VSF under an exclusive deal, then re-regulated and sorted in house. That sorting is real and you can see it in how consistent VSF units are, which is a fair reason to want VSF’s version over a plain Dandong 3235 in someone else’s case. Exclusive to VSF and made by VSF are two different claims.

Older non-free-sprung stock is still going around too. A watch being a VS3235 tells you nothing about which balance is inside it.

Where the AP movements came from

The clone 3120 was a JF design. JF closed. A Shanghai movement house picked the design up and improved it. APS then took that supply on and worked with the same Shanghai bench to develop the clone 4302. That is why the 4302 is the only serious base under a Royal Oak 15500 — TOP runs one, ZF’s V3 runs one, and ZF’s V2 before that ran a Miyota 9015. Quote “the ZF 15500” without a version number and you have said nothing.

The 4302 has a known fault: on some units the date wheel is too thick and sticks at the change until someone trims it. There is also a Dandong 4302 now, alongside the Shanghai one. That is why TOP’s row names the calibre and not the bench — nobody has published a teardown of a TOP 15500 saying which one is in it.

APS was raided and shut down around May 2026. Octa is the factory now claiming APS’s molds, movement plans and supply chain, and claiming free-sprung 4401, 4302 and 3132 bases on top of them. Nobody has posted a teardown of an Octa movement. Every free-sprung claim on that row is a sales claim until somebody opens one.

Part 2 is one movement with four badges

PPF, 3KF, DDF and BBF all run the clone 324 SC. It does not hack, which is correct — the genuine calibre 324 does not hack either. What separates them is engraving depth, not design. 3K laser-cuts its plates, so the text sits shallow. BBF and DDF engrave deep. DDF got to the clone 330 with hacking seconds first, and BBF followed. PPF’s 5712 is the odd one out, running a clone 240 with a moonphase module instead of the 324.

Four names, one movement. The real choice is dial colour and lug shape.

The rows we could not close

RICH sits in Part 1 on the strength of dealer listings that name the JH3285 in its free-sprung GMT-Master II builds and credit Jinghe directly. That is a listing, not a teardown. Rep blogs agreeing with each other is not proof either — the same network reprints identical sentences across four sites. TOP’s 4302 has the same problem.

Worth knowing about Hublot as well: listings use “BBF” and “HBF” more or less interchangeably on Big Bang Unico builds, and that bench has nothing to do with the BBF in Part 2 that makes the Nautilus 5711. Two factories, one short name.

What this changes when you buy

The factory name is a claim about the case, the finishing and the quality control. For most of this chart it is not a claim about the movement, because the movement came from somewhere else and the factory next door bought the same one.

So ask narrower questions than “which factory.”

Ask which calibre is in the actual unit, not the one on the model page. Ask which batch, because the base changes under a fixed factory name — ARF runs Shanghai in one Sub and Dandong in the next, ZF’s 15500 went from Miyota to 4302 across versions, BT keeps the 4130 on the 116500 while the 4131 went into the newer line, and VSF’s free-sprung balance only exists in certain 2026 batches. If free-sprung is why you are buying, ask whether the balance has rim weights or nothing at all. A dealer who cannot answer those three has either not opened the watch or is counting on you not asking.

Stop comparing badges. Compare benches, then judge the factory on the case.

Current as of September 2026. Two rows are unverified — RICH and TOP rest on dealer listings rather than a published teardown, and they get corrected here the moment somebody opens one.

Read next: VS3235 and VS3285 explained · the 2026 factory map · the full index