Le treizième Salon EPHJ-EPMT-SMT s’est tenu à Palexpo Genève en juin dernier. Plus important salon professionnel annuel de Suisse dans le domaine de la haute précision, de la sous-traitance en horlogerie-joaillerie, des microtechnologies et des technologies médicales, il s’impose comme une référence internationale.

La nouvelle presse hydraulique de haute précision HUMARD HU6, de la société HUMARD Automation conçu par Sardi Innovation.

Maintenant bien installé à Genève depuis trois ans après dix éditions organisées à Lausanne, le Salon EPHJ-EPMT-SMT n’a cessé de se développer tant en nombre d’exposants que de visiteurs. Les fournisseurs de l’industrie horlogère, qui représentent à eux seuls près de 60% des exposants avec près de 500 entreprises disposant d’un stand sur les 825 du Salon, ont tous conscience que les salons professionnels représentent la troisième source d’information des entreprises après la presse et internet. L’importance pour la Suisse de bénéficier de tels événements est donc capitale pour lui assurer un impact national et international tant sur le plan économique qu’industriel.

Les créateurs du Salon, André Colard et Olivier Saenger, l’ont bien compris et proposent depuis douze ans ce rendez-vous devenu incontournable, organisé désormais par Palexpo, sous la conduite de Barthélémy Martin, chef de projet. Au fil des ans, de nombreuses innovations ontainsi été présentées dans de plusieurs domaines. Cette édition n’a pas dérogé à la règle avec différentes nouveautés.

Les visiteurs ont pu découvrir une nouvelle matière inédite présentée par une jeune entreprise de Sion, CristalTech. Grâce à une technologie de cristallisation développée par cette société, l’osmium, le métal le plus dense sur Terre, pourra être travaillé par les horlogers-joailliers sous forme de plaques de différentes tailles et épaisseurs ou de tubes de diamètres variables. Encore plus rare que le platine, l’osmium pourrait bien être, dans le futur, le métal précieux utilisé pour la réalisation de modèles haut de gamme.

Dans un tout autre domaine, la société Giroud, basée au Locle, a dévoilé un nouveau système de chassage électropneumatique reproduisant à l’identique le mouvement d’une presse d’horloger manuelle. Ce nouveau concept permet non seulement de maintenir une qualité constante, mais également d’augmenter sensiblement la productivité.

L’entreprise Humard, établie à Delémont, présentait quant à elle sa dernière presse hydraulique de haute précision. D’une capacité de six tonnes, cet outil offre une précision encore jamais atteinte pour une telle rapidité d’exécution.

L’ébavurage, le polissage, le rayonnage ou encore le lissage de surface sont autant d’opérations délicates et particulièrement complexes, voire impossible en raison de la petite taille des pièces. ABC SwissTech, à La Chaux de Fonds, a conçu de nouveaux équipements capables de répondre aux plus grandes exigences. Les médias qui correspondent aux outils nécessaires aux opérations de tribofinition mis au point par ABC SwissTech, de très haute densité, de l’ordre de 20 kg/dm3 permettent d’obtenir d’excellents résultats.

Chaque année, de nombreuses conférences et tables rondes permettent également au public de s’informer de l’évolution de la branche, donnant à ce rendez-vous un intérêt toujours croissant.

De Frédéric Finot

Source: Journal Swiss de l’horologerie

Two European scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for describing the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that may explain where mass comes from and advances man’s understanding of how the world is constructed.
Peter Higgs, 84, a retired professor of theoretical physics at the University of Edinburgh, and Francois Englert, 80, a retired professor at the Free University of Brussels, will share the 8 million-krona ($1.25 million) prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said today in Stockholm.
The particle is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the Standard Model, a theory explaining how the universe is built, and its existence would help scientists gain a better understanding of how galaxies hold together.
“Some people have compared it to the discovery of DNA,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director-general at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN. “It’s not so wrong. It’s one of the building blocks of our existence. It ranks pretty high in the discoveries of the past century.”
The boson is named after Higgs, one of six scientists who devised a working theory of how elemental particles achieve mass in a three-month period in 1964. Englert had been the first to publish the theory a month earlier, along with Robert Brout, a Belgian colleague who died two years ago and wasn’t eligible for Nobel recognition because it is limited to living recipients.
“I’m very, very happy to have the recognition of this extraordinary reward,” Englert said, speaking by phone to a press conference held at the science academy.

 
Higgs Hiding
Higgs didn’t return calls for comment, though he posted a statement on his university’s website.
“I am overwhelmed to receive this award,” he wrote. “I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research.”
A native of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Higgs is remaining “deliberately out of touch today,” according to Richard Ball, the scientist who succeeded him at the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics in Edinburgh. “He’s a modest man. He’s quite shy.”
The Nobel committee wasn’t able to reach him either.
“We’ll try to call him again later today,” said Olga Botner, a professor of experimental elementary particle physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and a member of the Nobel committee. “The rumor is that he’s gone into hiding because he knows that if he gets it there will be a press storm.”

 
Quarks and Leptons
Particle physics is the study of the elemental building blocks that make up matter. These particles, with names such as quark, fermion, lepton and boson, can’t be subdivided. They exist and interact within several unseen fields that permeate the universe.
Scientists are trying to prove the existence of the Higgs field by displaying a physical effect for the Higgs boson, a particle that lives for less than a trillionth of a second and is an excitation, or force, within the Higgs field.
Researchers at CERN said last year they had observed a particle that may be the boson. New results from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva based on analysis of more data and presented at a conference in Italy this year “strongly indicate” that the particle discovered is indeed a Higgs boson, CERN said in March.

 
It’s Everywhere
“The particle itself is not as important as the theory — the theory tells us why we exist — it tells us why we don’t float away like a photon,” according to Botner. “The Higgs field is something that pervades the universe, it’s here in the room, it’s out there in black space, it’s everywhere.”
Higgs, speaking in July last year in the Old College at the University of Edinburgh, where he worked from 1960 until his retirement in 1996, said he didn’t expect the theoretical particle to be found in his lifetime.
“It’s very nice to be right sometimes,” he said then. Stephen Hawking, a British theoretical physicist who thought the boson wouldn’t be found, has said Higgs should get a Nobel.
At CERN, based near Geneva, “people just erupted in applause and shouts” when the names of the prize winners were announced, said Joe Incandela, a spokesman for the CMS experiment, one of the two that identified the Higgs boson. “As experimentalists we don’t go into this expecting a Nobel prize. For us the prize is the discovery.”
Englert, born in Etterbeek, Belgium, said he doesn’t yet know what he will do with the money. At a press conference at Free University, he expressed regret that Brout, his “close collaborator and friend,” wasn’t there to share the prize.

 
‘Lively Discussion’
The Nobel announcement was postponed by an hour, suggesting the committee took longer than expected to agree on a prize winner. The academy declined to give a reason for the delay.
“An academy should be a forum for lively discussion,” said Per Carlson, a former chairman of the Nobel committee and a professor of physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm who was in the room. “I cannot go into the details.”
Last year’s physics prize went to Serge Haroche, from France’s Ecole Normale Superieure, and David J. Wineland, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. They shared the award for the discovery of new ways to manipulate quantum particles without changing their nature.
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The Nobel Foundation was established in 1900 and the prizes were first handed out the following year. The first physics Nobel was awarded to Wilhelm Roentgen for his discovery of X-rays.

By Andrea Gerlin

Source: Bloomberg