Know-How FIBROFLEX® became an ideal solution in watchmaking industry!

One of the potential customers renowned for manufacturing one of the Finest Watches approached us with a very mentally stimulating requirement. With dedicated employees, through their expertise and meticulous attention to detail, craft the perfect aesthetic coverings for clock movements.

FIBRO, renowned for its High-Performance Standard Parts, was contacted and entrusted to create dials that meet high standards.

Project Background

Over the years, the demand for watches has significantly increased along with end customers’ prolific awareness of product quality and finishing. Despite the significant manual work involved in watchmaking (such as in mechanical production, painting, printing, or applying components), the company management was keenly interested in reducing the set-up time and increasing production repeatable and error-free job output.

Challenges in the Project

Typically, manufacturers make the Dials from non-ferrous metals with a rare preference for steel. These sheet metal parts are, on average, 0.5 mm thick. While the Dial indicators are made from Aluminium. The challenge was to suggest a Standard Part in a forming die to handle different materials with different hardnesses.

Additionally, the forming process occurs only in the final stages. The steel metal piece undergoes multiple value addition processes before forming into a dial for high-quality watches, thus exercising additional caution in the forming process.

Firstly, the customer demanded the same die usage for forming dial formation out of different materials and ease in dial shape formation with the finest surface finishing. FIBRO had to suggest solutions with a narrow tolerance window, facilitating premium finishing with the highest manufacturing quality.

FIBROFLEX®: FIBRO Solution

They approached FIBRO with basic result understanding and a simple drawing. The customer was looking for a partner who could understand the dial forming intricacies and provide a reliable solution.

We conducted many discussions to understand their processes and derive a solution that is easy to implement and reliable in delivering the results. Out of the comprehensive Standard Parts portfolio, we suggested using FIBROFLEX in the stamping process. Together with the client, we worked on a couple of iterations to find a suitable hardness of FIBROFLEX for the dial stamping.

Customer Take-aways:

• Increasing precision in the dial forming process resulting in the finest quality Dials
• Substantial reduction in set-up time
• Less tool wear and tear leads to increased tool service life

Overall, the customer was thankful for FIBRO’s reliability!