In the modern industrial world, we tend to talk of “custom-made and time-consuming” or “standard and available as of now”. Watchmakers G&F Châtelain have discovered an ideal alternative, combining flexibility and rapidity, for all its assembly-mounting, sandblasting, polishing and colouring-off operations. We talked with Messrs Kamel Hadjadji, head of Methods, Patrick Oudot, mass production advisor at G&F Châtelain, and Vincent Dormoy, head of Sales for French-speaking Switzerland at Composites Busch in Porrentruy, the company behind this little miracle.
With several years of experience in sintering to his credit, the technician is an expert in all aspects of what is still a relatively young technology.
G&F Châtelain is not a watchmaking company in the proper sense of the term, as it produces no movements, dials or hands. The company manufactures all the other watch parts itself, which calls for numerous lines of business, all of which are extremely demanding in terms of know-how and quality. It owns a large number of machine tools of many different types, and its greatest assets are the skills of its operators.
Polyamide 12 saves the day How did this company, which makes high-end watchmaking parts, even come to consider using parts made by sintering polyamide powder in its production process? Patrick Oudot: “Originally, we contacted Composites Busch with the idea of producing small mounts for high-precision assemblies. However, during our talks at this first meeting, we discovered that we could do much more.” Vincent Dormoy adds: “That’s how we work; we listen to our customers and then together we find a solution that suits them. In this case, we saw that the supports had a lot of potential for manual machining operations. These are often carried out at the end of the production chain on valuable pieces, and so all innovations capable of guaranteeing the quality of these operations were welcome.”
Whatever the shape, however complex All kinds of parts, from the simplest to the most complex, can be made with the technology used by Composites Busch. Kamel Hadjadji: “The parts that we produce are more and more complex – the shapes of the watches call for highly specific operations. For example, if we have to sandblast or bead-blast certain parts, we have to make a mask so that we only process the sections we want to process. Producing this kind of piece using conventional machining methods is very costly, or even impossible in some cases.”
The advantages of the solution offered by Composite Busch
- Total freedom as to the shape of the parts
- No danger of injury from the watches
- A pleasant material to handle
- Rapid process
- Parts can be adapted from batch to batch
- A cost-effective solution
- Ergonomic supports.
To be completed in a further issue of Eurotec.
Both companies will be present at EPHJ/EPMT in Lausanne: Composites Busch SA – H 10, A20. GF Châtelain H18, A5
Composites Busch SA Chemin des Grandes-Vies 54 - CH-2900 Porrentruy Tél. +41 32 465 70 30 - Fax +41 32 465 70 35 [email protected] - www.compositesbusch.ch
G&F Châtelain SA Allée Du Laser 18 - 2301, CH-La Chaux-De-Fonds Tél. +41 32 924 55 55 – Fax +41 32 924 55 56
