A watch industry stalwart for over seven decades, Blösch AG's core business centers on developing and depositing decorative and functional coatings. We specialize in combining a range of technologies, such as PVD, PECVD and galvanics, to coat exterior watch components and movement components.
Blösch AG has been setting standards for years in the development and production of optical coatings for the watch industry. For example, we were the first company to introduce scratch-resistant antireflection coatings to the market, thus enabling the double-sided antireflection coating of watch glasses.
Today we have a wide range of products and would be pleased to support you in selecting the optimum coating solution for your needs.
Blösch AG benefits from several PVD coating technologies allowing the deposition of metallic coatings of different colors and degrees of transparency.
Our possibilities for the interior of the crystal:
Our possibilities for the exterior of the crystal:
Factsheet: link
Blösch has a great know-how in the metallization of complex geometric parts, also with a structuring operation if necessary. Whether your parts are made of sapphire, ceramic material or metal, we offer 2 families of DLC coatings:
The main difference between these 2 families of DLC layers is their field of application: link
In addition to job coating services, Blösch AG also offers refined watch components as a product. We distinguish between two product categories:
Watch components from our own production:
We offer dials and turntables from our own production. We mainly manufacture components using electroforming and turntables made of sapphire and mineral glass wafers. Both technologies have a unique selling point on the market and enable you to realize exceptional designs in the mid to high-end segment.
Watch components manufactured by partners:
For sapphire watch glasses, we offer additional services such as purchasing, quality control, storage and logistics. With our competitive supplier network in Switzerland and abroad, we have the ability to implement substrate management tailored to your needs, so that you can concentrate fully on your products and not on logistics.
In addition to the watch components, we also offer tools for the watch industry. We have decades of experience with pad printing and produce our own printing plates. We have gained this competence with the integration of the company SEDECAL and have further developed it at Blösch since then.
At the latest after the mechanical watch has evolved from a timepiece to a piece of jewelry, the focus is on design. Design means form and color, both disciplines in which Blösch AG has many years of expertise. Through electroforming, for example, we realize 3D surfaces in the highest resolution for dials and moon discs. With PVD coating we bring color to the case, sapphire glasses, dials and discs - be it an elegant discreet grey, a deep black or a chameleon-like color effect.
Our know-how in electroforming and structured PVD coating is unique in Switzerland. We offer our competence for the medium to high-end segment, from development to series production. Contact us and let yourself be inspired by the multitude of technical possibilities for your future designs.
Anti-reflective coatings link
Functional coatingslink
Pad printing link
DLC Coating link
Metallization link
The main downside of using sapphire as watch crystal is its very high refractive index (1.77) which results in a significant reflection of the incident light of 15% or higher (approx. 7.5% per side).
Anti-reflective coatings considerably reduce this reflection, which improves and sharpens the visibility of the dial or other movement components. These coatings can be deposited on both sapphire and mineral crystals and can also be structured.
For the watch industry, Blösch AG offers three types of anti-reflective coatings:
Factsheet link
All Blösch anti-reflective coatings are compatible with other applications such as metallization, pad printing and - under certain conditions - with brazing or bonding.
By combining our diverse skills and broad knowledge we are able to provide complete solutions to our customer’s needs.
Examples
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Blösch AG offers multiple functional coatings for all your sapphire parts (crystals, dials, various indicators, …).
Our functional coatings offer additional protective or aesthetic features for your products.
Factsheet link
Sapphire or mineral crystals have insulating properties. The crystal surface may thus become electrically charged. This electrostatic charge may influence the moving parts inside the watch and may, for example, disturb the balance spring oscillation.
An antistatic coating prevents electrostatic charging and is applied to the interior of the glass. It may be combined with an anti-reflective coating.
Ultraviolet radiation is not completely absorbed by sapphire watch crystals. UV-sensitive components, such as e.g. certain materials of the dial, are thus at risk of faster aging.
An anti-UV coating blocks ultraviolet radiation and thus protects the exposed components. It is already combined with an anti-reflective coating and is applied to the interior of the glass.
The Easy-to-Clean treatment is a hydrophobic and oleophobic coating that limits the adhesion of water and lipids to the treated surface, reducing its soiling and facilitating its cleaning.
This treatment simplifies sales constraints, such as removing stains, fingerprints or other traces of any kind.
The coating is only a few nanometers thick and is compatible with our SPECTAR anti-reflective coating.
Dials or other transparent components are increasingly used to show novelties or other creations inside the movement. Semitransparent coatings allow designers to play with transparency and in doing so influence the visibility of the movement.
We use several procedures to produce semitransparent coatings:
This type of coating creates a semitransparent smoky gray effect. Its degree of transparency can be controlled via the layer thickness and its transmittance can be defined (in steps of 5%).
Using various materials and different degrees of oxidation a limited range of colored shades can be obtained. Thereby the transmittance is defined by the used materials.
All our translucent coatings can also be structured (e.g. semitransparent logos are possible). The possibility to combine these coatings with other processes such as anti-reflective coatings or pad printing must be discussed on a case-by-case basis.
In contrast to coatings applied by electroplating, the PVD coating technology has decisive advantages:
Blösch AG's infrastructure allows to produce and apply full-surface and structured color PVD coatings, based on precious metals (including gold 5N) and metal oxides, where colors such as grey, blue, brown, violet and green can be applied.
Optionally, decorative coatings can be structured. A wide variety of colors and combinations thereof, in conjunction with different structuring technologies allow us to implement your inventive designs. The coating type can be adapted to allow for subsequent bonding or brazing. Of course, all these coatings are compatible with anti-reflective coatings and pad printing.
The possibility to deposit colored coatings directly (from above) exists as well. Metallic substrates (e.g. dials) can thus be colored without erasing the texture of the dial.
Blaktop®, Anthratop®
Blaktop® and Anthratop® decorative hardcoats were developed to provide excellent color stability, allowing parts to be treated years apart, and to ensure color compatibility. They also have good mechanical characteristics and are suitable for all external parts.
DLC coatings are mainly used for decorative purposes on the exterior of the watch (case middle, case back, bezel, bracelet elements, etc.).
They combine the properties of diamond-like carbon (hardness, chemical resistance, electrical insulation) and graphite (black color, tribological behavior, elasticity).
Detailed specifications are available in our technical data sheet "DLC coatings".
Move®
The DLC Move® decorative hard coat was developed to meet a need for moving parts. These parts (barrel drums, friction springs, etc.) must have high mechanical and tribological characteristics, and an impeccable aesthetic appearance. The combination of these 2 requirements is achieved with DLC Move, and movement components can benefit from an improvement of their tribological and mechanical properties (e.g. hardness).
Detailed specifications are available in our "DLC Coatings" datasheet: link
Various types of dials can be realized thanks to our wide range of technologies.
Manufacturing of components by electroforming
Creative project ideas often collide with the harsh reality of technical feasibility or financial limitations. The manufacturing process by Blösch using electroforming is distinguished from traditional manufacturing by the fabrication of a master tool from which copies are reproduced with nanometric precision.
Freed from thickness constraints, the master tool can be composed of an assembly of parts with various surface finishes such that complex and time-consuming machining operations (laser, electroerosion, etc.) need to be carried out only once.
This technology allows to control:
This technology eliminates time-consuming and tedious machining processes in serial production.
Blösch provides blank dials to be finished by your usual dial manufacturer or offer to finish the dials according to your requirements.
Fabrication of transparent dials and components:
Blösch offers the following treatments:
Novelty: Blösch can take care of purchasing the substrate.
Diverse watch movement components can be fabricated thanks to our technologies.
Electroformed moon phases with structured metallization
Dials or other components fabricated using these brittle materials can be very thin. It is thus of interest to avoid a piecewise manipulation of such substrates.
In order to enable this, Blösch has developed a wafer technology for sapphire or mineral glass.
Description:
Fabrication of several pieces on the same substrate (wafer) with separation at the end of the procedure.
Within the scope of this wafer technology, we apply PVD metallizations (decorative and/or semitransparent), anti-reflective coatings, decorative varnish or laser treatments to one or both sides of the wafer.
Blösch AG can take care of purchasing the substrate.
Blösch takes care of watch crystals from A to Z and offers
the following treatments:
Beautiful pad prints are only possible with high quality printing plates.
Blösch offers prime steel and ceramic printing plates according to these two key elements:
The use of a laser machining process allows to guarantee a uniform engraving depth and to engrave the same design at multiple depths.
In addition, we also offer to develop and supply four-color printing plates
Are you trying to restore an old dial but do not have a digital technical drawing at hand? Blösch can propose a complete solution even when electronic files are missing.
Steel or ceramic?
Steel printing plates show their limitations in certain applications, especially when printing white varnish and photoluminescent material (SLN). For these cases, laser-engraved ceramic printing plates with their high mechanical and chemical resistance offer a solution. In addition, ceramic printing plates also offer an extended lifespan and are thus useful for large production volumes.
Using the various PVD coating technologies of Blösch AG a wide range of decorative coatings can be deposited. Thereby, colored coatings can be deposited directly (on the top) or indirectly (on the bottom). Individual structuring of these coatings is possible, and, in addition, these coatings are compatible with anti-reflective coatings, aesthetic pad printing, bonding or brazing.
Our customers can benefit from our extended know-how in combining the different coating technologies to create dials or components with a complex design.
Blösch layers can be structured as follows:
For some applications it is possible to realize structured metallization using metal masks (lower edge quality).
When it comes to customizing your dial or other components, pad printing offers a wide choice of designs and colors. The varnish can be applied on the bottom and/or top side.
The pad printing process offers the following advantages:
Four-color printing is a lacquer printing process using subtractive synthesis of the three elementary colors blue (cyan), red (magenta) and yellow as well as black and thus allows to create wide-ranging color shades.
Perfectly reproducing an image requires isolating each elementary color from the image in order to fabricate one printing plate per color.
The advantages of four-color printing:
Superluminova (SLN) are photoluminescent pigments allowing to render your components visible at night and can be part of our products.
We can take care of the application of SLN in collaboration with trusted Swiss suppliers in order to supply a finished product.