Even though Biel/Bienne is best known for watch-making and hosts the head offices of some major global brands, more than 50% of the world’s vehicles contain parts that were produced in the Swiss city.

Cars were first manufactured there in 1889, and General Motors has been manufacturing in the area since the 1950s.

Today, Polydec SA — a manufacturer with over 30 Deco, EvoDeco and SwissNano machines from Tornos (www.tornos.com) — continues the area’s automotive success story.

The company makes more than 40 million parts a month for the watch-making, medical and automotive sectors, including 20 million shafts for “dashboard and fuel-injection systems”.

Polydec recently machined steel parts just 0.07mm in diameter and 0.3mm long. CEO Claude Konrad says that the company regularly processes workpieces just 0.3mm in diameter that require a number of machining processes, such as drilling or polygon cutting.

“When we reach such dimensions, cutting speeds are virtually zero, which changes the whole dynamics of machining. That said, we are producing to tolerances of ±2µm on a regular basis — and even ±1µm in extreme cases.”

A key in this ultra-fine work is Polydec’s 12 SwissNano machines. The company initially used one of these for a year, subjecting it to exhaustive testing — and subsequently bought a further 11.

Mr Konrad says: “For the automotive sector, there are extreme cases where we have to deliver parts with a reject rate of zero ppm. For this purpose, we have also installed automatic inspection systems that enable us to subject all of the parts to an extensive evaluation.”