The sunshine of June (on the 6th, 7th and 8th to be precise) accompanied us on a visit to one of the most important manufactures in the history of watchmaking, the Minerva of Villeret, which today, in partnership with Montblanc, makes the high-end watches of the Hamburg-based company. Accompanied by Demetrio Cabiddu, one of the most interesting figures in Swiss watchmaking and technical director of the Institut Minerva de Recherche en Haute Horlogerie, our two members Saverio Salici and Luca Sotgiu visited the 19th-century building (renovated while retaining much of the original structure), inside which some of the manual workmanship that is the manufactory's real strength still takes place. The tour of the manufactory began with an introduction to the history of Minerva, since the arrival of the Robert family in the St. Imier valley in the 14th century. Demetrio Cabiddu takes us on a tour of discovery of the Montblanc Minerva manufacture, starting with the stamping department, where the plates for the manufacture of all the movement components, from the plates to the wheels, are made from metal bars. The most "modern" department of the Villeret manufacture is the one housing the milling machines and EDM machine tools for cutting steel components, drilling bridges and cutting plates. After this fascinating plunge into the past, we move on to what is the heart of the manufacture: the department for the manufacture, finishing and assembly of the regulating organ, the balance-spring. Here we can observe a speciality that belongs to very few manufactures: the manufacture of spiral springs. The visit ends with the prototype assembly department, where the ExoTourbillon Chronographe, a chronograph with GMT function and tourbillon device presented at SIHH 2010, is also manufactured. The particularity of this watch lies in the fact that, for the first time, the balance is outside the tourbillon cage, in which only the escapement is enclosed.
