Swiss Army Knife - Megafactories

Swiss Army knife - National Geographic Megafactories.
Victorinox : On the Cutting Edge - Swiss Style Magazine.

What an extraordinary scene ! Swiss is the beautiful country, but this is not Tour Channel. 

The contents also excerpted from : Swiss Style - The Swiss Magazine for Leaders.  

For more information : On the Cutting Edge

The factory looks like building in the paradise !!

Victorinox Milestones

1884 — Karl Elsener opens his cutlery business in Ibach-Schwyz.
1891 — The Swiss Army is supplied with soldiers’ knives for the first time. 1
1909 — In order to distinguish it from copies, the company founder decides to use the cross and shield, the current Victorinox emblem, on all pocket knives
from then on.
1945 — After the Second World War, the PX stores of the U.S. Army, Marines and Air Force sell large numbers of the “Swiss Officer’s Knife” to their officers and soldiers. The Ameri cans call it “Swiss Army Knife” for short. This term is adopted in all English-speaking countries.
1989 — Expansion into timepieces
1999 — Victorinox strengthens the brand and broadens its appeal with the Travel Gear line.
2000 — Establishment of the Victorinox Foundation to provide job security in the long term and to ensure financial independence.
2001 — All five Victorinox product categories (pocket tools, household and professional knives, timepieces, travel gear and fashion) are presented for the first time together in a flagship store in Soho, New York.
2005 — Takeover of Wenger SA, Delémont (CH), a knife manufacturer since 1893 and also a supplier to the Swiss Army.
2008 — First European f lagship store in New Bond Street, London.
2009 — Victorinox has a global workforce of over 1,700 and generates sales of about CHF 500 million.

Swiss Army Knife designed on the computer, if the design gets the green light, it would be
mass produced.

Let's see how to manufacture the blade.

The blade starts from the steel coil.

The worker checks the quality of the stainless steel.

Mold. It is like the stamping process in the automobile industry.

After stamping process, the amber hose uses the air to blow the blade away from the mold.

The worker made the stamp on the blade.

This steel would be back to recycling.

Depend on the different mold, the machine can produce variable blades.

After stamping process, this step is polishing.



When the metal meet the ceramic stone.



This process takes from 5 to 8 hours.

They also use the power  to prevent parts from sticking together.

The water helps lubricate the ceramic stone keeping them flow freely and washed away
the residue from the stamping process.

Once ready, the blades extract with the magnetic

Hardening.

The raw steel is too soft to cut anything. This oven solidify the steel, 1050 degrees changed
the molecular structure of the metal. The key element to steel is the carbon, too much carbon
would be brittle, so they need to balance flexibility and hardness.

After stamping, polishing, and hardening, it is time to grind. Grinding the surface to the right
dimension.

Two disks on the each side of the grinding machine works tandem creating the perfect
dimension. The water lubricates the blade and prevents the heat to build up.

Basically, this grinding process is like the caliper gripped the brake disc.

The standard is unforgiving, it needed to be perfect size to fit together.

Pliers.

The blade needed to be sharpened.

The micrometer checks the exact dimension.

Now, the blades made this company and then nearly destroyed itself.

The challenge is 911 event, because the knife becomes the potential weapon. The most
obvious and visible consequence was a drastic change in air travel regulations to prevent
that planes could ever be used as potential weapons again.But 9/11 and the radical change of airlines regulations that followed also made collateral victims thousands of kilometres away from the US.

As airlines forbade to carry knives on board, Victorinox, for which the US was the most important market, witnessed an almost overnight decline of 30 percent in its turnover. Business to business sales also decreased sharply, as Swiss Army knives were now perceived as an inappropriate gift in the US – the terrorists had used simple box cutters to hijack the planes.


“Watches helped to compensate the drop a little bit, but it was indeed a very difficult time,” admits Carl Elsener in his usual even tone, which does not give away the number of sleepless nights one assumes the Elseners must have gone through trying to find ways of saving their business. This task was even made more complex by the Elseners’ resolute decision not to let one person working for their company go.

The company is now venturing into new territories with the launch of a new luggage line, a new product that still embodies the values of the brand, “quality, innovation, functionality and iconic design”,

Let's see how to manufacture the classic red handle.

Plastic Injection Machine.

The ejection pins eject the parts out of the mold.

This mechanism can hold the blade at the certain position.

The worker made the final check.

Any imperfection would be sent back to repair.

Swiss Army Knife has broken my record of the pictures.