Post by Sam on Jul 8, 2007 14:34:49 GMT -6
Now for a big report! I have to say of the big makers, this was the place I really was looking forward to visiting (since I have a couple of JLC's and have always admired what the company does). This visit was just after AP, so it would be hard to disappoint me after that fiasco! 
I think many recognize the company as one that is very innovative and also as a supplier of movements to other, more highly regarded companies over the years. JLC holds over 230 patents for innovations in movements, cases, and even bracelets. I don't think there is any other watch company who can make such a claim. Movement design seems to be one of their strengths, and since their founding in 1833 they have developed and produced in excess of 1,000 different calibres. Today they have over 40 calibres in production, and no other maker makes as many different movements at one time as JLC does!
JLC's biggest market is Europe, which surprised me a bit.
The factory we toured employs approximately 1,000 people, and is quite large at 30,000 square metres.
So we arrived on the day that their new lobby was finished. It was quite nice, and here is Jacqui admiring some of the watches on display:
On three of the tours, we were required to wear additional clothing. At Vacheron Constantine, Patek Philippe, and JLC. So here is our group (half the total tour group) in the lobby ready for our tour (photo credit to Stan Sirody):
Someone offered to take a shot of Jacqui and me with our smocks on, so I took them up on it!
One of the first rooms we went to had a small selection of watches we could view up close. Unfortunately nothing released at Basel was available, which was a bit of a disappointment.
And for my good friend Marc, I took this shot!
They had a Calibre 101 movement there that we could view. As I noted before, this movement was developed ion 1927 and is the smallest mechanical movement in production today. One fact that I know without learning it on the tour is that Queen Elizabeth II wore a JLC with a Cal. 101 in it for her coronation.
Keep in mind that half of the area you see looking at this movement is purely the escapement! Here is a shot from another part of the tour where they had a model of this calibre on display - you can see some detail there....
As we walked to various locations in the factory, watches were not the only beautiful things we saw. How is this for scenery as you work!
So off we went to the manufacturing floor. This was the first time we had a chance to see some of the more "nitty gritty" parts of watch production. Now they did ask us not to take pictures in certain areas and of certain processes, but for the most part they were okay with a few shots here and there. So these may seem a bit random.....
Here are some movement plates in a bucket ready for the next operation:
After some machining has been done, they are in racks as they move through the plant.....
Now I read recently in a post on TZ someone asking what made JLC movements so "special" compared to something like a base ETA movement. One answer given was that JLC does not used stamped parts. Not sure where that information came from, but it's certainly not true. I wasn't really able to take shots of the presses they use, but there is no doubt they stamp a large number of parts for the movements. Certainly many parts get further finishing, but they certainly start out stamped. They did show us a few of the literally hundreds of die sets they had in storage. They were quite proud of the fact that they made their own tooling.
In the press room I did take this photo of a strip of abrasive that they were punching out circles from. Now you might ask why I would take this picture, but it's important (at least for me) in understanding how JLC finishes their movements. These abrasive circles or disks, are used on machines that produce the Côtes de Genève pattern on movement parts. Using such a disk is not the traditional method for producing this pattern and I will go into more detail about that in another report on Philippe Dufour, who I believe is widely regarded as having the best finishes on any watch made today.
Certainly JLC is not exclusive to using less traditional and more efficient methods, as even places like Patek Philippe use such methods for their lower end movements, with only the very high end watches getting the traditional work done on them.
We moved into the room where they perform various heat treating operations, such as bluing screws. This was of interest to me since I recently tried to blue some hands and failed miserably....
Here is a set-up that is a small furnace that parts are loaded into and heated, and when they reach the proper temperature they are quenched in an oil bath (the small white tray).
Here is what in my industry would be known as a "shaker furnace" with a tray that moves back and forth going through a furnace. As the tray shakes, it moves small parts along a certain distance, and they are fully heat treated by the time they make their way through the heating zone. The furnace is fed by a vibratory bowl feeder that takes a mass of parts and puts them into an orderly fashion for a even load on the furnace tray.
This picture I struggled with because of the background making it very hard to see the details - after some processing/cropping this is the best image I could get. It shows a blank piece on the right and the finished part that comes from the blank. It was meant to illustrate how much material is machined away to make the finished part. Marc should recognize this part as an item in the tourbillon of his Master Tourbillon watch.
We then went to a room where cylindrical parts are turned on various machines. These machines are smaller versions of what I have worked with for years in my job. They are a single spindle turning machine that feeds a bar (or in this case more like a wire) to a point where various tools come in on slides to perform machining operations, and cut off a finished part. Of course here the parts are quite small compared to the tubes we used to cut being up to nearly 7 inches in diameter. This is a shot of the area where the machining takes place.
Oil is used as a coolant and lubricant in the cutting operations and is also used to flush away the finished parts, which are caught in a tray. These parts are quite small!
An observation about industrial health and safety.......one thing that surprised me a bit about most of the factories we visited was the lack of safety devices. Many machines did not have the kind of guarding or interlocks I would expect to see covering rotating shafts that could entangle someone or other hazards. In the press department, the interlocks were there but were quite crude compared to what I know is required in Canada. Most people did not wear much in the way of personal protective equipment like ear plugs in noisy areas or even safety glasses. Certainly in Canada we would never get away with what they seemed to there. This picture illustrates a little of what I am talking about. Note that the drive for the machine she is operating is completely open and the belts and pulleys can be seen. In addition, she is not wearing safety glasses. Very odd.
So here is an operation after the initial turning of a part where the teeth of the gears are formed. Each part is hand loaded into this machine, and the part to be machined rotates as well as a cutter that forms the gear teeth.
These are finished parts after that operation......I'm not 100% sure what this part is but it resembles a cannon pinion.
We then moved to a room where I took several photos of the process. In a Swiss lever escapement the "pallet" or "anchor" is a key component that meshes with the escape wheel. Stones are mounted in the pallet where they contact the escape wheel, and in this room they mount the stones. Here is a picture of a pallet from a watch I am restoring just so you know what we are looking at.....
The pallets are inspected on an optical comparator - this device magnifies and projects an image on a screen, and a CAD-generated overlay is used to compare the part to the dimensions it's supposed to be - very familiar piece of equipment for me. This one is showing the pallet, but not the end with the pallet jewels...
The first step is that the individual pallet jewels are fit to the pallets themselves. In this station a lady works under a microscope and presses the pallet stones into the pallet.
Here is a closer look - very delicate work so no coffee before you start the day!
Now the stones aren't set to the correct depth yet, and they are not fastened in place just yet. As you can see from the pallet picture above, a substance is used to "glue" the stones in place, and that is shellac. Here are strips of shellac used to do the gluing....
The pallets with the stones inserted are placed in these machined trays where the depth of the stone is set by the relief in the tray....
These trays are placed on a heated table, and the pallets warmed enough to make the shellac melt when it makes contact. Once the whole tray is warmed, a worker simply uses the small shellac strips and touches it to the spot where the stone and pallet meet, and the part is glued in place! No one was doing this during our visit, but here is one of the warming stations.
We were then moving on to the polishing room, and here are some case parts in a tray just before the room.
I tried to capture the mood in the polishing room. It was a dark and sort of magical mood in there with only the task lighting. Unlike most places in watch factories where natural light is very desirable, in the polishing room all the windows are covered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When we asked why, it was explained that outside light is too variable in nature for this operation, and the appearance of the finish will change depending on the lighting. So in order to get a consistent finish, they block off all natural light, and provide specific task lighting in this area – it makes perfect sense but is something that had never occurred to me before.
Here are some shots of cases going through this area - we saw a lot of Reverso cases going through....
Here are case backs for the Master Compressor Extreme With Alarm "46" version being polished....
Here some reverso cases set with diamonds. You can see the case on the right has a fixture inside that allows a handle to be attached to manipulate the case under the polishing wheels.
With these people polishing day in and day out, their hands were a blur!!
So the tour of the main factory ended there, and we made a short walk outside to a small building away from the factory itself. This is where some of the complicated watches are made, and where the enamelling and engraving is done. Some true artists work in this building!
Our first stop was the room where some of the high complications are assembled. This day a Gyrotourbillon was being worked on and given the final touches before shipping. This watch has the tourbillon (and not just any tourbillon as you will see), perpetual calendar, retrograde displays, 8-day power reserve, and equation of time. It is a true Grande Complication! I believe the retail for the standard model (no diamonds) is $275,000 US.
Now this is quite a complicated tourbillon mechanism, since it rotates in more than one plane. The watch itself has more than 600 parts in it. But here is an illustration of one of the niggling things about JLC that almost all in our group talked about - the level of finish in such a masterpiece is disappointing. Some areas are really not finished at all, and why JLC does not take the time to complete the finish on a piece like this is a mystery......
The watch maker placed this wonder under a microscope for us to view the Gyro-Tourbillon in detail. I grabbed my small camera and placed the lens to the eyepiece, and shot this video - this thing is amazing! Note that I edited out the sound so you didn't have to hear the babbling of our group....
media.putfile.com/Gyrotourbillon
Here is a close up of a gyro assembly on the bench....
And here is the watch the movement from the video is going into....a little on the bling side for me.
So that was an amazing watch to see in person I must say.
We then moved to the room where the enamelling is done. This is somewhat of a lost art and JLC is fortunate to have cultivated some incredible talent in this area. Here are some examples of the work we saw....
The colours just pop on these pieces!
I liked this one a lot!
One of the workstations...
In another room, examples of some pieces in the process of being engraved.
So that concluded the tour of the factory, and JLC treated us to dinner at a local restaurant. One of the people that joined us was JLC's chief designer - Janek Dieleskewicz. This man is responsible for the entire Master Control series, as well as the Reverso line. Since I have a Master Moon that this man was responsible for designing, I wanted a picture with him....
I was hoping to meet another designer on this trip, Ms. Magali Metrailler who was responsible for the Master Compressor line, but unfortunately she did not join us. Too bad because she is much better looking that Mr. Dieleskewicz as shown in this picture from a report on The Purists......
One last thing.......I often see the question on watch forums "How do you pronounce Jaeger-LeCoultre?" I usually try to avoid that issue myself by saying "Jay-el-see"
On the tour we had, the lady who took us through the factory used the French pronunciation that sounds like "jzay-jzair le coot" with the first two syllables starting with a sound like a J and Z together. Since Switzerland has both French and German influences, I heard others outside of the company, but locals to the area, use the more popular "yay-grr" as in Chuck Yeager, sort of pronunciation. Basically I think either is fine, and someone on the bus relayed a story where they heard someone from the company use both methods during a single speech.
So that concludes our visit and my report on one of the most innovative makers out there in the world of watches. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did!
Thanks, Al
I think many recognize the company as one that is very innovative and also as a supplier of movements to other, more highly regarded companies over the years. JLC holds over 230 patents for innovations in movements, cases, and even bracelets. I don't think there is any other watch company who can make such a claim. Movement design seems to be one of their strengths, and since their founding in 1833 they have developed and produced in excess of 1,000 different calibres. Today they have over 40 calibres in production, and no other maker makes as many different movements at one time as JLC does!
JLC's biggest market is Europe, which surprised me a bit.
The factory we toured employs approximately 1,000 people, and is quite large at 30,000 square metres.
So we arrived on the day that their new lobby was finished. It was quite nice, and here is Jacqui admiring some of the watches on display:
On three of the tours, we were required to wear additional clothing. At Vacheron Constantine, Patek Philippe, and JLC. So here is our group (half the total tour group) in the lobby ready for our tour (photo credit to Stan Sirody):
Someone offered to take a shot of Jacqui and me with our smocks on, so I took them up on it!
One of the first rooms we went to had a small selection of watches we could view up close. Unfortunately nothing released at Basel was available, which was a bit of a disappointment.
And for my good friend Marc, I took this shot!
They had a Calibre 101 movement there that we could view. As I noted before, this movement was developed ion 1927 and is the smallest mechanical movement in production today. One fact that I know without learning it on the tour is that Queen Elizabeth II wore a JLC with a Cal. 101 in it for her coronation.
Keep in mind that half of the area you see looking at this movement is purely the escapement! Here is a shot from another part of the tour where they had a model of this calibre on display - you can see some detail there....
As we walked to various locations in the factory, watches were not the only beautiful things we saw. How is this for scenery as you work!
So off we went to the manufacturing floor. This was the first time we had a chance to see some of the more "nitty gritty" parts of watch production. Now they did ask us not to take pictures in certain areas and of certain processes, but for the most part they were okay with a few shots here and there. So these may seem a bit random.....
Here are some movement plates in a bucket ready for the next operation:
After some machining has been done, they are in racks as they move through the plant.....
Now I read recently in a post on TZ someone asking what made JLC movements so "special" compared to something like a base ETA movement. One answer given was that JLC does not used stamped parts. Not sure where that information came from, but it's certainly not true. I wasn't really able to take shots of the presses they use, but there is no doubt they stamp a large number of parts for the movements. Certainly many parts get further finishing, but they certainly start out stamped. They did show us a few of the literally hundreds of die sets they had in storage. They were quite proud of the fact that they made their own tooling.
In the press room I did take this photo of a strip of abrasive that they were punching out circles from. Now you might ask why I would take this picture, but it's important (at least for me) in understanding how JLC finishes their movements. These abrasive circles or disks, are used on machines that produce the Côtes de Genève pattern on movement parts. Using such a disk is not the traditional method for producing this pattern and I will go into more detail about that in another report on Philippe Dufour, who I believe is widely regarded as having the best finishes on any watch made today.
Certainly JLC is not exclusive to using less traditional and more efficient methods, as even places like Patek Philippe use such methods for their lower end movements, with only the very high end watches getting the traditional work done on them.
We moved into the room where they perform various heat treating operations, such as bluing screws. This was of interest to me since I recently tried to blue some hands and failed miserably....
Here is a set-up that is a small furnace that parts are loaded into and heated, and when they reach the proper temperature they are quenched in an oil bath (the small white tray).
Here is what in my industry would be known as a "shaker furnace" with a tray that moves back and forth going through a furnace. As the tray shakes, it moves small parts along a certain distance, and they are fully heat treated by the time they make their way through the heating zone. The furnace is fed by a vibratory bowl feeder that takes a mass of parts and puts them into an orderly fashion for a even load on the furnace tray.
This picture I struggled with because of the background making it very hard to see the details - after some processing/cropping this is the best image I could get. It shows a blank piece on the right and the finished part that comes from the blank. It was meant to illustrate how much material is machined away to make the finished part. Marc should recognize this part as an item in the tourbillon of his Master Tourbillon watch.
We then went to a room where cylindrical parts are turned on various machines. These machines are smaller versions of what I have worked with for years in my job. They are a single spindle turning machine that feeds a bar (or in this case more like a wire) to a point where various tools come in on slides to perform machining operations, and cut off a finished part. Of course here the parts are quite small compared to the tubes we used to cut being up to nearly 7 inches in diameter. This is a shot of the area where the machining takes place.
Oil is used as a coolant and lubricant in the cutting operations and is also used to flush away the finished parts, which are caught in a tray. These parts are quite small!
An observation about industrial health and safety.......one thing that surprised me a bit about most of the factories we visited was the lack of safety devices. Many machines did not have the kind of guarding or interlocks I would expect to see covering rotating shafts that could entangle someone or other hazards. In the press department, the interlocks were there but were quite crude compared to what I know is required in Canada. Most people did not wear much in the way of personal protective equipment like ear plugs in noisy areas or even safety glasses. Certainly in Canada we would never get away with what they seemed to there. This picture illustrates a little of what I am talking about. Note that the drive for the machine she is operating is completely open and the belts and pulleys can be seen. In addition, she is not wearing safety glasses. Very odd.
So here is an operation after the initial turning of a part where the teeth of the gears are formed. Each part is hand loaded into this machine, and the part to be machined rotates as well as a cutter that forms the gear teeth.
These are finished parts after that operation......I'm not 100% sure what this part is but it resembles a cannon pinion.
We then moved to a room where I took several photos of the process. In a Swiss lever escapement the "pallet" or "anchor" is a key component that meshes with the escape wheel. Stones are mounted in the pallet where they contact the escape wheel, and in this room they mount the stones. Here is a picture of a pallet from a watch I am restoring just so you know what we are looking at.....
The pallets are inspected on an optical comparator - this device magnifies and projects an image on a screen, and a CAD-generated overlay is used to compare the part to the dimensions it's supposed to be - very familiar piece of equipment for me. This one is showing the pallet, but not the end with the pallet jewels...
The first step is that the individual pallet jewels are fit to the pallets themselves. In this station a lady works under a microscope and presses the pallet stones into the pallet.
Here is a closer look - very delicate work so no coffee before you start the day!
Now the stones aren't set to the correct depth yet, and they are not fastened in place just yet. As you can see from the pallet picture above, a substance is used to "glue" the stones in place, and that is shellac. Here are strips of shellac used to do the gluing....
The pallets with the stones inserted are placed in these machined trays where the depth of the stone is set by the relief in the tray....
These trays are placed on a heated table, and the pallets warmed enough to make the shellac melt when it makes contact. Once the whole tray is warmed, a worker simply uses the small shellac strips and touches it to the spot where the stone and pallet meet, and the part is glued in place! No one was doing this during our visit, but here is one of the warming stations.
We were then moving on to the polishing room, and here are some case parts in a tray just before the room.
I tried to capture the mood in the polishing room. It was a dark and sort of magical mood in there with only the task lighting. Unlike most places in watch factories where natural light is very desirable, in the polishing room all the windows are covered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When we asked why, it was explained that outside light is too variable in nature for this operation, and the appearance of the finish will change depending on the lighting. So in order to get a consistent finish, they block off all natural light, and provide specific task lighting in this area – it makes perfect sense but is something that had never occurred to me before.
Here are some shots of cases going through this area - we saw a lot of Reverso cases going through....
Here are case backs for the Master Compressor Extreme With Alarm "46" version being polished....
Here some reverso cases set with diamonds. You can see the case on the right has a fixture inside that allows a handle to be attached to manipulate the case under the polishing wheels.
With these people polishing day in and day out, their hands were a blur!!
So the tour of the main factory ended there, and we made a short walk outside to a small building away from the factory itself. This is where some of the complicated watches are made, and where the enamelling and engraving is done. Some true artists work in this building!
Our first stop was the room where some of the high complications are assembled. This day a Gyrotourbillon was being worked on and given the final touches before shipping. This watch has the tourbillon (and not just any tourbillon as you will see), perpetual calendar, retrograde displays, 8-day power reserve, and equation of time. It is a true Grande Complication! I believe the retail for the standard model (no diamonds) is $275,000 US.
Now this is quite a complicated tourbillon mechanism, since it rotates in more than one plane. The watch itself has more than 600 parts in it. But here is an illustration of one of the niggling things about JLC that almost all in our group talked about - the level of finish in such a masterpiece is disappointing. Some areas are really not finished at all, and why JLC does not take the time to complete the finish on a piece like this is a mystery......
The watch maker placed this wonder under a microscope for us to view the Gyro-Tourbillon in detail. I grabbed my small camera and placed the lens to the eyepiece, and shot this video - this thing is amazing! Note that I edited out the sound so you didn't have to hear the babbling of our group....
media.putfile.com/Gyrotourbillon
Here is a close up of a gyro assembly on the bench....
And here is the watch the movement from the video is going into....a little on the bling side for me.
So that was an amazing watch to see in person I must say.
We then moved to the room where the enamelling is done. This is somewhat of a lost art and JLC is fortunate to have cultivated some incredible talent in this area. Here are some examples of the work we saw....
The colours just pop on these pieces!
I liked this one a lot!
One of the workstations...
In another room, examples of some pieces in the process of being engraved.
So that concluded the tour of the factory, and JLC treated us to dinner at a local restaurant. One of the people that joined us was JLC's chief designer - Janek Dieleskewicz. This man is responsible for the entire Master Control series, as well as the Reverso line. Since I have a Master Moon that this man was responsible for designing, I wanted a picture with him....
I was hoping to meet another designer on this trip, Ms. Magali Metrailler who was responsible for the Master Compressor line, but unfortunately she did not join us. Too bad because she is much better looking that Mr. Dieleskewicz as shown in this picture from a report on The Purists......
One last thing.......I often see the question on watch forums "How do you pronounce Jaeger-LeCoultre?" I usually try to avoid that issue myself by saying "Jay-el-see"
On the tour we had, the lady who took us through the factory used the French pronunciation that sounds like "jzay-jzair le coot" with the first two syllables starting with a sound like a J and Z together. Since Switzerland has both French and German influences, I heard others outside of the company, but locals to the area, use the more popular "yay-grr" as in Chuck Yeager, sort of pronunciation. Basically I think either is fine, and someone on the bus relayed a story where they heard someone from the company use both methods during a single speech.
So that concludes our visit and my report on one of the most innovative makers out there in the world of watches. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did!
Thanks, Al