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Fabulous finds at EPHJ
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Fabulous finds at EPHJ

Sunday, 21 June 2015
By Thierry Brandt
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Thierry Brandt

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5 min read

Behind the big names and the great watches are a host of small businesses proposing new tools, new materials and new manufacturing processes. Most of the time they work in the shadows, coming out only at trade fairs such as the recent Professional Watchmaking and Jewellery Environment (EPHJ-EPMT-SMT) in Geneva, a showcase for the inventions and innovations that will transform tomorrow’s watchmaking.

For a small business supplying the watch industry, there is no other way to survive and thrive than constant innovation, not least in the current economic climate, and the efforts these companies make in research and development are often nothing short of heroic. A round-up of some of the most noteworthy results.

A world first!
Band of gold

A gold watch mounted on a gold bracelet is fairly commonplace. Now imagine the same watch with a strap that has been moulded from an alloy, or more to the point a composite, of silicon and powdered gold. A world first! This new technique, which goes by the name of Orosoft, is the brainchild of Ecometal, a company based in Ticino which employs eight people. The result is truly astounding, combining the supple quality of the base material, which can be fashioned into all manner of shapes and even washed with water, with the elegant shimmer of precious metal. A single strap uses roughly eight grams of 18k gold. The finished product is, of course, guaranteed by a certificate and a hallmark, exactly like a solid gold bracelet. The Orosoft strap can even be engraved and set with stones.

So where did the idea originate? Martin Bless, a director at Ecometal, explains. “We treat precious metals, and one of the things we do is recover precious metal from waste generated by the watch and jewellery industries. We’ve worked in this highly specialised field for seven years. Which is how we got to thinking about a new way to use the scoria.” Needless to say, the process has been patented. For the manufacturing part, Ecometal works with Biwi, another leading supplier to the watch industry, located in Glovelier in the canton of Jura. Ecometal’s invention looks set for a promising future, particularly as the potential applications go far beyond watch straps to encompass the fashion industry and all types of silicon-based accessories, such as mobile phone covers.

Rubber stamp

From silicon to rubber. Mestel, whose 140-strong workforce is based in Grens, in the canton of Vaud, is another watch strap manufacturer. But that’s not all. The company also looks for ways to innovate using its stock-in-trade material of rubber. The result is a process, which has not yet been revealed, for 3D printing on rubber. What uses does it have? “Many,” answers Philip de Boer, who is head of sales and development. “Firstly, it can be used to produce a raised inscription or pattern up to two-tenths or three-tenths of a millimetre thick. Secondly, it can be applied to any finished metal surface, i.e. after the appropriate surface treatment. This surface can be chamfered, convex, concave, engine-turned, anything really. Lastly, we can print extremely fine lines, less than a tenth of a millimetre wide, and propose pretty much any colour.” And there is more. As Philip de Boer explains, Mestel’s 3D-Write process has implications that go beyond aesthetic and design. “We can use this technique to apply rubber with extreme precision just about anywhere we want; to movement components for example. One application would be to make silent blocks to absorb shocks on certain moving parts.”

It all comes down to intensity, density and focal length.
Andrea Lovera
Dynamite with a laser beam

Another Ticino-based firm to stand out among exhibitors at the Geneva fair was Femtoprint, which went on to win the 2015 Exhibitors Grand Prix for the most remarkable innovation in high-precision technology. This newly-hatched start-up uses a femtosecond laser to produce three-dimensional objects, including on a nanometric scale. Some explanations are in order, beginning with the femtosecond laser, a device which produces ultrashort optical pulses (1 femtosecond = 10-15 seconds). Femtoprint uses these lasers to sculpt transparent materials such as glass, fused silica, sapphire and certain polycarbonates. To cut the desired shape, the beam must stop at the right place, to put it (more than) simply.

“It all comes down to intensity, density and focal length,” smiles chief science officer Andrea Lovera. “We use femtosecond technology to make parts that would be impossible to manufacture any other way, machined with a precision of one micron. It opens up infinite possibilities in many areas, and especially in medtech, optics and micromechanics. For example, we can pierce holes in the ends of catheters, create “optical paths” or make moving parts within parts.” And in watchmaking? “It can be used for two-dimensional parts, for the watch’s exterior and for the movement, such as bridges, wheels, balance wheels, springs or parts of the case. Either Femtoprint can make them in its own factory or it can sell its machines to clients who choose to produce these components themselves.”

Raising the stakes

Tool manufacturer VOH (Vaucher Outillage Horloger), which is twenty this year, came to EPHJ with PaviX, a machine developed and made by the firm in Courtelary, in the Berne Jura. PaviX looks like a “run-of-the-mill” tool. But is there such a thing as a run-of-the-mill tool? Not in this case. PaviX is a new-generation, electronically-assisted staking tool with a Bluetooth interface. Like its predecessors, it is used to fit hands to a dial but with an ingenious twist that makes operators’ lives that much easier, as it allows them to work with seven different series of hands per dial without switching tools. This is possible thanks to a barrel, similar to the barrel on a gun except that instead of bullets, PaviX is loaded with stakes adapted to the size of each hand. So much for the mechanics, what about the electronics? They are used to control driving force and height when fitting the hands, and to store up to 999 programmes on an SD memory card. A brand need only make the initial set-up for each of its watch models and the machine is ready to go. The operator then simply enters the code for each series of hands to access the pre-recorded parameters. Better still, there is no button-pushing required. Codes are entered using an optical barcode reader. Simple, when you think about it!

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