Innovation at the Poinçon de Genève

 

Innovation at the Poinçon de Genève

Timelab in Geneva invited to a presentation of their newest developments for the Poinçon de Genève, the Geneva Hallmark.




The presentation was made at the Athenée, the seat of the Societé des Arts, founded in 1776. This building, the Athenée, was erected in 1863 and has been the host to many memorable events through its history. Among those events is the founding of the Red Cross in 1863 and the founding of the Swiss Chronometric Society (SSC) in 1924.



Note that Societé des Arts is not to be understood as fine arts but as arts and sciences. The goal was to contribute to all initiatives toward the progress and promotion of manufacturing, commerce and agriculture. It wasn't until later in its history that the Societé des Arts opened a section for Beaux-Arts.























Getting down to today’s business, Timelab introduced the new procedure for placing the Poinçon de Genève marking on the movements. The Poinçon de Genève or Geneva Hallmark was instituted in 1886 as a means to differentiate movements made in Geneva from the “foreign” competition (mostly from the Vallee de Joux). The regulations are pretty comprehensive and the whole organisation is state run and guaranteed.



To show its adherence to the regulations each movement is currently stamped with the seal of Geneva. This stamping on a finished piece can deform the piece and in worst case make it unusable. To eliminate this deformation of the pieces a new method of inscribing the seal on the movement was developed. This new method also allows tracing to allow determining if movement is counterfeit. Today’s press conference was to announce this new marking method, which will become a requirement in the future after an introduction period.



The presentation told us much about the advantages of the Geneva Hallmark, that it assures the craftsmanship, provenance and reliability of a watch, but little was said of how this new hallmarking procedure works. Buzz words like nano-structured and micro-postioning were thrown about. After taking this all in and trying to get more info at the apero afterwards, here is my resume of what I understood: - Applying the new hallmark exerts no force on the pieces. - The hallmark is like a tattoo where a new metal is inserted in the metal of the movement part. - The alloy of the inserted metal can be used as a tracer to identify the producing company and make counterfeiting “impossible”.



As such the hallmarking appears to be (this is my interpretation only and may have nothing to do with reality) a two step procedure. In the first step metal in the form of the seal is etched from the piece being marked, presumably using a procedure similar to electro-erosion. The second step is filling the etched out shape with a new metal by some kind of fusion procedure. When finished the piece is flat and the marking is deep enough that traditional surface decoration does not remove it. Thus the marking can be done before the decoration is done, eliminating another possible source of problems. Even after asking I am not sure what this has to do with nano-structuring, but maybe this has something to do with the form in which the new metal is applied for the fusion step. It appears to be in some kind of gel.


A machine has been developed so that this procedure is easy in a production environment after a minimal education time for the operator. There were questions if this would increase the price for a Geneva Hallmark watch, but apparently the production price differential will be negligible so there should be no effect on user prices. Actually it would seem that if there is a real problem of parts becoming unusable when the hallmark is applied today, this system should reduce costs for the manufacturers.

Present at the presentation were representatives of two of the major watchmakers using the poinçon de Genève, Mr. Karl Friedrich Scheufele of Chopard and Mr. Juan-Carlos Torres of Vacheron Constantin along with representatives of the Timelab and Phasis, the company which developed the procedure for this new marking system. Timelab, for those who don't know, is a private company that has been given the mission by the government of Geneva to care for the poinçon de Genève and proposes as well R&D and certification capabilities to watchmakers.







After the announcement there was, of course, the more important portion of the evening, the apero where most of Geneva's watchmaking world showed up. Here we see Svend Andersen.







OT, my French grandmother always wore her hair like that. I like to think she looked that good in her younger years too.







To finish up a nice afternoon, it was a beautiful day in Geneva, here some pics.

















This message has been edited by DonCorson on 2014-09-17 04:51:37

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