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A Weiss Watch Company, USA-made Special Issue Field Watch, featuring Caliber 1003 watch movement.
In June 2013, the American watch manufacturer Weiss Watch Company was founded by California native Cameron Weiss. That same year, the Swiss machine tool manufacturer Tornos debuted the SwissNano, a Swiss-type lathe engineered to enable production of exceptionally small components requiring a high degree of precision. Five years on, as Watch Weiss Company works to cement its place in watchmaking history, Tornos helps keep the company turning.
Testament to one man’s obsession with fine timepieces, Weiss Watch Company came into being in Weiss’s apartment in Los Angeles. The company employs a meticulously modern process to design and engineer its watches. Each one starts out as a hand-drawn sketch, which is engineered, prototyped, inspected, measured and tested; and only then does the watch enter a complex production phase.
Each sketch is translated into parts to be machined according to Weiss Watch Company’s own engineering documents. The company manufactures all but two of the more than 150 components comprising its watches, and these are first produced as prototypes to ensure perfect fit and tolerances. Prior to assembly, each component is inspected using equipment capable of measuring to one-tenth of a micron, thus ensuring proper fit and functionality prior to assembly.
Such attention to detail is a given for Weiss, who became fascinated with watches when, as a pre-schooler, he was given a Swatch watch as a gift. It was not long after that he discovered mechanical watches.
“A mechanical watch uses no electronics,” said Weiss. “All components from the barrel to the pinions to the escapement are machined from solid metals. There is something fascinating about them when you dive into the internal mechanisms. Just like a car, what's ‘under the hood’ of a mechanical watch really does matter.”
This early interest eventually led to Weiss’s attending the prestigious Nicolas G. Hayek Watchmaking School in Miami, Florida, US, named after the founder and former CEO of the Swatch Group. After earning Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Education Program (WOSTEP) certification, he continued his watchmaking education, receiving further certifications as an employee of Swiss watchmakers Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin in the US and Switzerland, respectively.
All the while, he was fine-tuning his own watch designs, with the vision of starting his own company. And this is just what he did in June 2013. Since then, Weiss Watch Company has flourished, beginning with 10 pieces of a single model—namely a black dial, manual-wind watch on a green canvas strap—in 2013. Today, the company sells 2,000 watches per year, representing 20 different models, and has its own premises, with a machine shop, as well as five employees, including Weiss.
Along the way, Weiss Watch Company has overcome many barriers—including a dearth of US-based watchmaking expertise and US-made components—to not only meet market demand but help resurrect the American watchmaking industry.
“Our biggest challenge has been growing enough to support wholesale and training,” said Weiss. “Everything we do here is outside of any existing manufacturing realm in the US, so we have to train the people we hire and the contractors we work with. This is important because we uphold the very exacting standards expected of Swiss watchmakers.”
Enter the SwissNano
In the early days, Weiss Watch Company relied on an external partner to machine its cases and dials, and Weiss assembled the timepieces in his apartment. Today though, the company manufacturers all but two of its own watch components in a 195 m2 facility affording turning and milling technologies, finishing and non-contact inspection of all components and complete cleanroom assembly. The hairspring and mainspring are sourced from Switzerland.
In keeping with its goal of manufacturing as many of its watch movements’ components as possible—from screws and pinions to arbors—in 2016, Weiss Watch Company purchased a SwissNano machine from Tornos distributor Protek CNC Sales in Simi Valley, California.
“Any turned part under 4 mm that goes into one of our watches is made on the SwissNano,” explained Weiss. “We also do gear hobbing on the machine. Two thousand watches a year is not a lot of watches. The SwissNano can make 2,000 pinions in a couple of hours. But once we have all of our components set up on one machine for low quantity manufacturing, we can purchase additional machines as needed to keep pace with demand. We would like to have 50 of these machines on our shop floor one day.”
A sliding pinion is just one example of a component perfectly executed on the SwissNano. It is the component that interacts with the setting wheels to enable the crown to be turned to move the hands on the watch. The sliding pinion has face gears on one side and castle gears on the other side, and its manufacture requires internal broaching and external turning. In a single setup, Weiss Watch Company’s SwissNano flawlessly produces 2 mm diameter, 4 mm long sliding pinions made of AP 20 soft steel, respecting tolerances from -0 to +3–5 microns and yielding surface quality of Ra 16 or less.
Grant Hughson, manufacturing engineer at Weiss Watch Company and a former applications engineer at Sandvik Coromant, knows the ins and outs of machine tools, and his expertise held a great deal of sway when Weiss was contemplating whether the SwissNano would meet his company’s requirements.
“Factors [that influenced] our buying decision were that the SwissNano was actually engineered with watchmaking in mind and is successfully used by large watchmakers,” said Hughson. “I knew it was a newer machine and I’m hesitant to purchase a really new machine, but the SwissNano has proven its value.
“For its size and setup, the SwissNano is unique. [In terms of] layout and configuration, there aren’t many competitors that can do what it can do. Most SwissNano users are running tens of thousands of parts successfully. We are doing short runs of a couple of hundred parts, so we have a lot of changeovers.”
Today, the SwissNano also serves Pinion Precision Technology, co-founded by Weiss and Hughson to offer precision manufacturing services for finished products as well as consulting, engineering, development, production and assembly of fine timepieces and more. Like Weiss Watch Company, Pinion Precision Technology’s products carry the ‘made in America’ country of origin label and comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s made in America standards.
Weiss Watchmaking Company
Tornos
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The watch screw hand-finishing process at Weiss Watch Company.
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The watch screw hand-finishing process at Weiss Watch Company.
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The watch screw hand-finishing process at Weiss Watch Company.