DonCorson
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The EPHJ 2014 in Geneva
The EPHJ 2014 in Geneva
One of the big events in the Swiss watchmaking industry each year is the EPHJ. Think of a BaselWorld showing not the watches, but everything you could possibly need to make your watches. The EPHJ started out about 15 years ago as a small intimate fair in Lausanne for watch and jewelry makers. About 3 years ago the fair moved the the Palexpo in Geneva where they have much more space and it has expanded to the domains of microtechnologies and medical technology too. This year the fair has over 800 exhibiters. It is no longer intimate at all.
Being at the Palexpo has the big advantage too of having perfect transportation connections, car parking, train station and airport are all together. Getting off the train the first thing I see is people heading off with quick steps to the EPHJ.
In the following I will document a tiny portion of what I saw there. I hope you will enjoy this meandering around the fair despite the sometimes poor quality of my point and shoot pictures.
Of course equipment for your watchmakers is on display with the big players such as Bergeon and VOH.
But let's not get distracted by the pretty stuff. You need to build up an industrial movement making infrastructure. With this equipment you can go from raw metal to decorated plates and bridges with inserted jewels and surface decoration.
The first stations do the heavy machining with flood lubrication.
After the flood machining the parts are cleaned and dried.
Now the jewel holes are honed to size and the threads cut.
The next station takes care of all the machining that needs to be done from the side, first cutting the plate out from the raw stock and then drilling and machining from the side.
Now the jewels can be inserted...
and finally the decoration is applied.
This is how the final piece looks when it falls out of the machine. If you ask me it just needs a trip through a galvanic bath with some rhodium or gold for some corrosion protection.
Although it hasn't really moved into watchmaking very much except for
rough models 3D printing is making advances. Here some pieces made with
laser sintering of stainless steel.
These pieces don't look that special, simple turned axles and pinions. But the machine used to make then certainly is special. Instead of turning the piece to be cut as in a standard lathe, the tools turn around the work piece. This allows using very long raw materials. In a standard lathe the maximum length of the raw material is about 3 meters. This 3 meters can be cut up into smaller pieces, but then new material needs to be charged. Even when automatic this charging of new material takes time and costly equipment. Using a rotating tool lathe it is no problem to charge the machine with a spool of wire of the right dimension that is 2km long. Then the machine can really work for a long while without pause.
Some injection molded case parts.
Sapphire is being used for more and more watch parts not just glasses.
Imagine the watch for which this glass was made!
Metrologie is, of course, a big subject for the watchmaking community and there were many venders present. Optical measurement has taken immense strides in the last couple of years, now including 3D measurements of entire pieces without ever touching them. Here we see the stand of Aubert and his simpler and more usable machines which we have seen so often in my shop reports.
Some people like to see pretty displays of jewelry and/or shoes. Others peruse the collets and cutting tools.
Of course all the associated crafts are present, like bands and bracelets.
Miniature painting
You need some hands or dials for your watches?
Measuring tools
Need parts to make your own machine tools? You'll find them here.
Let's make our own case. Milling and finishing, brushing and polishing, all automatic.
For all this automatic machining precision fixturing is of course of great importance.
Gear cutting
A little jewelry making demonstration, preparing a raw ring in gold for stone setting by hand.
The smallest ball bearing I saw was 1.3mm in diameter (not one ball, there entire bearing!). These are much bigger ones, I thought those little ones would look too much like dust in a picture.
And yes, there are women who inspect other things than shoes in shop windows.
Someone had to bring in a cow.
It has been a busy and tiring afternoon. I saw more than I expected and was able to get the information I needed for the near future.
I will be back next year.
I hope you have enjoyed this little walk through the EPHJ.
Don
The EPHJ 2014 in Geneva
Big thanks Don!
