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R. AUDEMARS SA - About us R. Audemars SA is a medium Swiss Company located in Ticino. It is part of a private Holding that controls other two Companies, one of which located in the German part of Switzerland and the other in China out of Hong Kong. R. Audemars SA has more than 100 years of experience in engineering & co-design, industrialization and mass-production of highly precise micro-components. Audemars currently occupy some 120 employees in Switzerland and approx. 100 employees in China. All Companies - Swiss, Chinese and Joint Venture - are ISO 9001:2000 certified.
ACTIVITIES
As to transducers, the main activities are aimed at the production of micro-components and sub-assemblies, parts of electro-mechanical devices. The main division, covering 45% of the annual sales volume, is the watch sector with design and production of micro permanent magnets, rotors and micro-coils for stepping motors of analogical quartz watches. The remaining 55% are composed by automotive and industrial applications and also new emerging sectors like medical devices. Together with a US-partner, since 2003 R. Audemars SA is operating with a 50/50 Joint Venture in the hearing aids sector, with important supplies of micro-coils to the major players of the market.
PRODUCTS
Micro-Permanent-Magnets: Based on the important know-how in high magnetic field density block materials (NdFeB and SmCo), R. Audemars SA is specialized in the machining and shaping of tiny dimension magnets with the following characteristics: minimum outer diameters of 0.3mm, small tolerances up to +/- 10 µm, piercing of micro-holes down to 0.15mm, deep hole magnets with a max. length of 20mm and hole diameter down to 0.8mm. These extra hard materials are machined using machines developed in-house, based on the experience of manufacturing diamond products,.
Coating processes: Depending on customer needs, Audemars offers special coating processes like Parylene, Epoxy resin, UV cured lack, plastic overmoulding, nickel, tin, gold and others. Micro-coils: R. Audemars SA is specialized in the development and production of customized micro-coils with dimensions down to 0.6x1.0mm, a wire thickness down to 10µm and coil core dimension from 0.5mm. The mass-production of coils is commissioned in China to fulfil the needs of the customers in terms of cost.
RFID/Tagging: More then 20 years ago, the Audemars family brought in from the USA the first know-how for RFID technologies and developed the transponders for different tracking applications. In particular, Audemars is specialised in packaging technologies and devices for glass, plastic and resin transponders as also the glass sealing with laser. The R&D department of R. Audemars SA is working on new RF solutions for automotive, medical and special applications. In the 90’s, the excellent Marketing activities of R. Audemars SA gave birth to an important spin off Company for passive RF devices and technologies, mainly operating in the identification sector for veterinary applications and laundry tagging.
Micro-Assemblies: R. Audemars SA is specialized in the development of production technologies, systems and processes to assemble magnets and axles or other components, coils and prints, chips or sub-assemblies. To perform these activities there is the extensive use of laser systems, coupled with highly-automatic machines. NEW DEVELOPMENTS
Since 2003, Audemars is a key partner of a US firm operating in the medical sector with a highly innovative product. The activities of R. Audemars SA , in this case, are focused on co-design, process definition and build up of automatic production lines for a minimally invasive, implantable RF identification device for cancer treatment. The product has been launched on the US market in November 2006.
Audemars is also a key supplier of different micro-components to a Swiss start up (ex EPFL); this customer has developed and introduced to the market in 2006 a new generation of gastro banding systems.
Another area where R. Audemars SA assured its technical support is the developments of extremely small transducers for intra-body 3D navigation and information transmission.
In the hearing aids sector, specially for deep deaf systems, Audemars supported the development of new complete small sub-assemblies for implantable devices. These devices are scheduled to be brought to the market in early 2007. In this same sector R. Audemars SA is a key supplier also for T-coils and RF-coils, amplified and not, available also with an SMD layout. These components are developed in Europe and USA, while the mass-production takes place in the owned Chinese Company.
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