On 18 June, no fewer than twelve members of L'Orologio Club had the opportunity to visit the IWC manufacture in Schaffhausen, on the banks of the Rhine. It was a unique experience, with full immersion in the brand's present and history. Today, IWC employs 500 employees, including watchmakers and technicians, in the production departments. The production volume stands at 90,000 watches a year (it was 60,000 in 2005) and manufacturing is highly mechanised as far as series models are concerned, while traditional, highly artisanal workmanship is maintained in the assembly department for complicated models. Calibre components are produced in a department outside the main factory and located in another building in the city. This is where CNC machine tools, from milling machines to EDM machines, produce bridges, sinkers and steel components, cut by EDM. A new robot for polishing and satin-finishing the cases, an operation that still requires manual control to achieve the best result, could also be admired in the factory. The company's most fascinating atelier is of course the workshop for complicated watches. This is where minute repeaters, tourbillons, the Grande Complication (automatic split-seconds chronograph with perpetual calendar and minute repeater) and the new Portuguese Sidérale Scafusia (constant-force tourbillon with perpetual calendar, sidereal time and sky map on the back, sunrise and sunset display) are assembled. Only five people work in the 'speciality atelier', as it is called. The visit to the manufacture was accompanied by the experience and knowledge of an exceptional guide: Professor Ugo Pancani, consultant to the House and professor of watchmaking who, at the end of our tour, gave the guests an authentic practical lesson. With the help of a video camera and a video projector, Pancani guided the participants in the disassembly and reassembly of a hand-wound calibre, a particularly simple operation for two of our guests, Bruno Caputo and Salvatore Bova, themselves graduate watchmakers, while the others had to work hard, although Giuliano Bordoni and Andrea Bertolaja, having already participated in the Lange Akademie, had a bit of an advantage... To complete the full immersion in IWC's DNA, there was no shortage of contact with the world of flight, to which the company has been linked since the Second World War, when it supplied the air forces of Europe's major armies with its watches and time-measuring instruments. As was the case with the Club's first visit, this year the company invited its guests to a special flight in a 1939 Junkers 52 transport aircraft (which was also used as a bomber during the Second World War), equipped with three BMW engines and of which only five examples remain in the world: one of them is sponsored by IWC. The Ju 52 pilots gave us an exciting flight over the peaks of the Swiss Alps, flying over Lake Lucerne and, exceptionally, over the city of Zurich.
