A long view on innovation

The view from Jungfraujoch inspires awe. So does the railway that transports visitors to the site—a ridge located 11,332′ above sea level in the Swiss Alps.

The altitude increases 4,600′ from the bottom of the 5.6-mile-long rail line to its top. Begun in 1896, I learned while visiting last October, the project required workers wielding picks and axes to dig a 4.5-mile tunnel through the Eiger and Mönch mountains. The railway took 16 years to complete.

I admire people who commit to and complete long-term projects. It denotes determination, faith in their abilities, and grit.

Selfie taken at Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, by CTE Publisher Don Nelson.

I was exposed to another example of commitment while in Switzerland, during a visit to the Mikron Group. Company vice president Markus Schnyder recounted his attempts in the early 1990s to develop a drill for a customer that used Mikron rotary transfer machines to drill holes in stainless steel watch bracelets. The links featured 1.05mm- to 1.45mm-dia. holes that had a maximum depth of 6× diameter.

At the time, standard HSS drills were used for the application. But HSS wore excessively in the stainless, causing frequent shutdowns to retool the transfer machine. Schnyder sought to develop a longer-wearing carbide drill for the job.

He wasn’t able to deliver. The idea of applying “carbide tools instead of HSS tools—and guaranteeing process reliability—failed completely,” Schnyder said. He tested and retested design iterations on the customer’s transfer machine. Despite the carbide drills’ sophisticated geometries, they all broke after producing two or three holes.

The reasons: Machines back then lacked the spindle speeds necessary to adequately drill stainless, and the inflexibility of the carbide caused the tools to snap under the slightest lateral pressure.

Solving the customer’s problem required Schnyder to put aside his idea of developing a carbide tool for the application. He ended up designing and delivering a HSS drill. It outperformed the HSS tool the customer had been using, but the failure rankled.