Chopard Geneva Factory Tour 2009

DonCorson provides a fascinating account of the Purists on Tour 2009 visit to Chopard's Geneva factory, focusing on the intricate processes behind their jewelry and watch case manufacturing. This report offers a rare, detailed look at the journey from raw gold to finished watch components, highlighting Chopard's commitment to in-house production and traditional craftsmanship.

Day 2, The Purists on Tour 2009, we visit Chopard in Geneva

Yesterday we had the pleasure of visiting Chopard’s watchmaking factory in Fleurier where the movement parts are made and a large portion of the movements are also assembled.  Today we will visit the Geneva factory where Chopard has about half their jewelry design and production along with the watch case and bracelet making and assembly for the Geneva Seal watches.  The other half of the Chopard jewelry making activities is in Pforzheim in Germany.

Our first stop at the Geneva site was to see the jewelry designers in their airy and light office.   As you can see, here the work is done with pen and colors on paper, not a computer to be found.

After seeing where the jewelry designs are made and admiring their work we moved on to the basis of the production, making the gold alloy from its constituents, in this case we see 18k rose gold being made from fine gold, pure copper and pure silver

These materials are melted together in the crucible in the induction oven below and poured into a mold

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Here the mold is being removed from the oven after the gold has been poured

Now the mold is opened…

And the 4kg ingot of 18k gold is visible.

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The ingot is still very hot and the final cooling is in a water bath

Just imagine how the price of those 4kg of metal is rising every day these days.
The ingot is now rolled flat in a rolling mill and numbered.  A corner is then cut off which is sent to the Swiss assaying office for confirmation of its contents before it is further processed.

The stamping tools for all the Chopard jewelry and watch cases are stored here so that needed repairs and replacements can be made even from older pieces that are no longer in production.

These special lathes are used for diamond turning of metals.  This quickly gives the pieces a perfectly polished and plane surface.

We now move on to the production shop for bracelet parts and case milling.  Here we see a 9 headed CNC lathe used for producing bracelet parts.

This CNC lathe can machine from both the right and after automatically passing the piece to a second fixture from the left.  This allows completely machining a watch case from both sides without human intervention.

Assembling the metal watch bands is very labor intensive.  We see many work benches dedicated to band assembly.

Here we are in the lapidary shop where the precious stones are cut to form for the Haute Joaillerie collection.  Here the artisan is cutting a set of emeralds.

Here we see a Happy Diamonds watch being assembled.  Of course, the cleanliness of the space for the moving diamonds is of utmost importance before pressing in the sapphire glass sealing them in.

Back to the mechanical watches… an automatic L.U.C. caliber 11 CF column-wheel flyback chronograph movement without the eccentric weight.