Independents

Part 2: Christophe Claret Manufacture d'horlogerie

 

As one of the major forces in the design and production of complicated movements, in particular tourbillons and minute repeaters, it is clear that Chistophe Claret has a sizable force of engineers and draftsmen on the staff using the most modern computer based design tools.  I counted about 8 people in this department.

Realising the great visual effect of movies Claret produces in house animated movies of his movements using top-of-the-line image synthesis tools.  Even with the rack of 12 specialised image processing computers in this lab each image in a film takes about 25 minutes to synthesize.  At 25 a second in a film you need to be patient.

Moving quickly from the imaginary world of synthesized images to the real world of nuts and bolts we arrive in the turning shop.  Here 3 older Tornos cam programmed automatic lathes have been converted to computer control.  These ultraprecise and stable machines are used for the simpler parts.

More complicated parts can be turned on the 2 Citizen CNC lathes on the other side of the room.

A little selection of the parts made here including balance wheels, gears and axles.

Next door some machines that are only rarely seen.
Here a machine for burnishing pivots.  This does the final sizing and surface finishing of pivots and is necessary for smoothest running and long pivot life.

Right next door a specialised gear cutting machine, here cutting a beveled spur gear which is about 2mm in diameter.

The pride of Mr. Claret, here right in the picture, is the new laser cutting machine with which now approx. 80% of their flat metal parts are cut.  Producing a cut surface which is so good that it can be immediately polished (such as I have never seen before from any cutting machine), this machine does the work of 6 wire electro-erosion machines working 24 hours a day in only 4 hours.  This is an in-house development of which Mr. Claret is justly proud.

Of course the shop has a multitude of standard automatic milling machines with workpiece changers and tool changers too.

All the machines that might be working titanium are also fitted with automatic fire extinguishing systems as titanium has a maddening tendency to burn instead of cutting correctly.

Some movement plates just out of the milling machine.

Another first for me was seeing this machine for machining sapphire.

Here we see the saphire dial of the DualTow just after machining.

The machine can not only cut out sapphire plates to form, but also sculpt the material.  Here a bridge cut in sapphire.

The tools used are diamond covered pins, this one 0.3mm in diameter.  They do not spin as in a normal milling machine, but vibrate ultrasonically to cut the material.

Claret is equipped to do most plating needed such as rhodium and gold.  Here some parts hung on a “tree” ready for cleaning and plating.

The galvanic bathes.

After seeing here how the parts are made we head on, in the next instalment, to the watchmaking ateliers.

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