Swiss watches take a 3D shift

Bloomberg

When the spindle broke off his wife’s sewing machine, Michael Sorkin refused to replace the device. Instead, he bought a 3-D printer and built the part himself. Four years later, he’s using the technology to change how to make the Swiss watch you might get for Christmas.
On a rainy afternoon in Sorkin’s company’s dimly lit office in central Berlin, an employee in a white lab coat checks on the progress of six cubes tinted in see-through orange. A laser silently slices resin, layer by layer. Formlabs’ product: 3D printers. Interested customers include Swiss watchmakers and jewelers, which are quietly testing the process’s potential.
“If you don’t concern yourself with new technology, you’ll lose out,” said Sorkin, Formlabs Europe’s managing director, as he pointed to printed models of figurines used in movies and rings used by jewelers spread out on a table in a conference room. “We are disrupting an industry that hasn’t changed in centuries, and bringing fresh wind into it.” The technology is also starting to be deployed in the Swiss chocolate industry, though it’s less far along. Nestle SA, the world’s biggest food company, uses 3-D printing in research into prototypes for chocolate confectionery and says it’s interested in going further. Zurich-based Barry Callebaut AG, which makes almost a quarter of the world’s chocolate and supplies Unilever with chocolate for its Magnum ice cream brand, is testing new ways of decorating and forming chocolate in its gourmet business.
For the makers of Swiss watches, embroiled in the most challenging times since the introduction of battery-powered timepieces in the 1970s, new technologies could help speed up manufacturing while containing costs. Declining demand in Asia has spread to Europe and the US this year, leading companies including Richemont to cut jobs, buy back unsold inventory from retailers and refocus on more affordable pieces. About 64 percent of more than 50 watch executives surveyed by Deloitte this year said they already use 3-D printing for prototypes. Swatch Group AG says the technology is deployed for multiple uses. TAG Heuer uses it for models of buckles and crowns. Romain Jerome, whose mechanical timepieces cost as much as 200,000 Swiss francs ($194,000), has enlisted 3-D companies Zedax and I.materialise to print its prototypes of cases, dials and bracelets.
Richemont, owner of the Cartier
and Montblanc brands, sponsors
a research chair at Lausanne’s
polytechnical university that studies micro-manufacturing technologies, including 3-D printing. Montblanc, which has been using it for about three years now to make prototypes, is looking to replace some of the older printers as the technology is advancing fast.
“It’s the quickest and best way of having a very precise indication of the volume and shape of any given part,” Davide Cerrato, head of Montblanc’s watch business, said by phone. “It takes just a few hours to get the outcome, so you can quickly see if what you’re drawing also works in 3D. It’s precise, and it’s very close to the final product.”
In 3-D printing, objects are designed on a computer. A connected printer reads the file, then heats up the material of choice — from specialized plastic to metal to chocolate — to the point where it melts to a hot wax-like consistency. Then, it shoots out layer upon layer through a heated nozzle in the specified shape. The process can cut down the time and effort in crafting desired products, while expanding design possibilities that may be too intricate for human hands.
Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert said in November that the company needs to be more flexible, adding that may involve completely new innovative production methods that the group already has in some of its “secret labs.” He didn’t specify whether they were related to 3-D printing.
The impact the technology would have on the price tag of the timepieces could go both ways, according to Yves Bellouard, who holds Richemont’s chair in multi-scale manufacturing technologies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. “A personalized watch — a certain type of watch for one single person — would certainly be added value, and people would buy it for that, so the price could go up,” Bellouard said. “Simplified manufacturing by reducing the number of components could also make it cheaper in certain aspects.”
TAG Heuer Chief Executive Officer Jean-Claude Biver says the transition is still at the beginning stages. “Today, it’s more part of accessories,” Biver said by phone. “But we’re on the way. You should never laugh at technology. There are many things that nobody would’ve thought possible — like that we’d walk on the moon some day.”