DonCorson[AHCI]
3358
Innovation at the Poinçon de Genève
Sep 17, 2014,04:49 AM
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