Industrial Revolution Gen 4.5

02/25/2015

Back to bloody watches – this would be a nice student project…

Create an automated watch mini assembly line.

Material Inputs would be:

Watch movement, either quartz or mechanical, from Japan or Switzerland
Metal blank(s)
Sapphire top glass
Coating materials
LED UV light and controller
Battery
Gaskets
Watch band
Watch band screws

Then these would all be placed in a cassette loading system and the following functions would be fully automated:

CNC Machining of the metal parts
Powder coating of the metal surfaces
Assembly of the final watch
Fully automated material handling

The idea would be to have labour-free flexible machining and coating capability so that a watch could be automatically assembled to a customer request for design features, and fully executed from Internet design and payment system, right through to customer delivery.

I would call this mini-factory, say, Industrial Revolution Gen 4.5 – sort of between the German 4.0 concept (automated factories) and Gen 5.0 which includes 3-D printing and the like (See http://bit.ly/1waigog).