In 2024, Pascal Leimer took over the management of the Swiss machining service provider Leiko. His first major action as the boss: He invested in a fully automated five-axis machining center of the highest class – a Kern Micro Vario. This opened up the family business to previously unimaginable, process-safe highest precision and unlocked new business areas in the watch, medical, automotive, and aerospace industries.
As a trained polymechanic, Pascal Leimer has been working at the family-owned small business Leiko SA. in Bettlach since 2022. Almost parallel to completing his part-time studies as a Supply Chain Manager in 2024, his father Konrad Leimer entrusted him with the management. At that time, the company with its six employees primarily produced individual parts for machine builders and fixtures for rotary transfer machines – that is, clamping devices and fixtures for large-scale production.
Pascal Leimer started with a vision: "I absolutely wanted to be able to produce highly precise components for watches and other particularly demanding industries. For this, investing in a new high-precision milling center was essential." Konrad Leimer supported his son in this plan. Not least because he remembered the time when he took over the company from his father Eduard Leimer in 1990:
"Back then, I absolutely wanted a CNC machine, which my father dismissed as unnecessary. We bought it anyway, and it was exactly the right decision."
Precision and reliability create access to high-end industries
As a typical Swiss manufacturing company, Leiko SA, located in the canton of Solothurn, has placed great value on high precision and reliability since its founding in 1962. Accordingly, companies from the watch industry based in the neighboring canton of Bern have always been among the significant customers. Initially, Leiko took over reaming operations for these and then increasingly supplied precision components up to micrometer-accurately produced fixtures.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, Leiko has increasingly succeeded in winning further demanding customers from the medical, automotive, and aerospace industries as well as mechanical engineering with prototype construction. "Here, our flexibility and speed of reaction pay off particularly," emphasizes Pascal Leimer. To ensure this, the company has highly qualified and committed skilled workers and an immensely large machine park that covers numerous manufacturing processes – from three- and five-axis milling to erosion, grinding, honing, and lapping.
The company also takes over the final assembly of assemblies if the customer wishes.
Extensive evaluation with a clear result
Building on existing strengths and complementing them with new ones – with these intentions, Pascal Leimer took over the management of the family business. The recent investment in a new, fully automated, and highly precise five-axis milling center is of central importance. Accordingly, he and his employees designed the evaluation process in a very elaborate manner.
Five machine suppliers made it to the shortlist. Pascal Leimer's team had intensive discussions with them and had test components produced.
He was also allowed to take a look into some of the sacred production halls of luxury watch manufacturers. "Unfortunately, I couldn't identify a hundred percent satisfactory solution," says the manager.
"I was already willing to settle for a compromise solution when our employee Kevin Riccius approached me and showed me a post with a Kern Micro on Instagram. His fascination with this machining center was so contagious that we immediately sent an inquiry to Kern. Shortly thereafter, regional sales manager Stephan Zeller invited us to Eschenlohe and presented the possibilities of the Kern Micro Vario live to us."
At that time, Pascal Leimer's enthusiasm was contagious, as Stephan Zeller and the Kern application engineers had suitable answers and solutions for all questions, concerns, and challenges: "I did not expect precision machining in this perfect form. It was clear: For us, there's nothing better. This five-axis machining center has to be it."
Thus, in April 2024, the decision was made for the fully automated Kern Micro Vario, and since October 2024, it has been in the Leiko production hall. Looking back, Leimer also remembers that at each of the visited premium watch manufacturers, there was at least one, usually strikingly red-painted Kern Micro. "No wonder," says the company boss with a smile.
Highly precise individual parts with complex geometries
Pascal Leimer's vision is becoming reality: He and his employees are now producing highly precise individual components with complex geometries on the Kern Micro Vario, such as medical instruments, implants, optomechanical assemblies, and inverters for e-mobility – from aluminum, titanium, and stainless steels as well as from hardened tool steels.
A specialty of Leiko is still the production of prototypes or small series of up to five components. "Thanks to our highly qualified employees, the high depth of manufacturing, and short decision-making paths, we can deliver such workpieces with manageable complexity from one day to the next. But we also usually manage to produce highly complex watch parts with a delivery time of one to two weeks. Always in close coordination with the customer."
Quality values with tolerances in diameter +/-2 µm, position +/-0.5 µm, and form/position +/-3 µm, as well as surface finishes of Ra = 0.6 µm were previously hardly economically feasible at Leiko. Since the Kern Micro Vario has been in the hall, this is no longer a problem according to Pascal Leimer. He rather mentions process-safe achievable tolerance values in diameter +/-0.5 µm, position +/-0.3 µm, and form/position +/-3 µm, as well as surface qualities of Ra = 0.1 µm.
New in the portfolio: Series production up to 1000 pieces
According to Leimer, the process-safe adherence to high precision works not only for individual parts but also in series. This is important as Leiko now also includes the production of small to medium batch sizes in its portfolio. Thus, the fully automated Kern Micro Vario pays off not only during the day. Equipped with an Erowa robot ERC 80 complete with ITS 148 pallet system, it operates unmanned during the late and night shifts, as well as entire weekends.
During this time, it produces error-free µm-precise components such as so-called tourbillons (balance weights) or watch plates, of which premium watch manufacturers order up to 1000 pieces.
Even individual parts and small series are produced unmanned by the Swiss contract manufacturer, thanks to the integrated Batch Process Manager (BPM) in the Heidenhain control TNC 640, an easy-to-use job management system. Polymechanic Kevin Riccius only inputs the first part of a small series, loads the workpiece changer, and starts the BPM. This then checks whether all necessary tools with sufficient 'stand time' are available in the tool changer, optimizes the processes, and calculates the total runtime – regardless of whether one or various products need to be processed unmanned.
Reliable production in unmanned shifts
Kevin Riccius usually presses the start button for automated production shortly before the end of his working hours. Then he goes home and can – as he reports – now also sleep well: "Before we had the Kern machine, it was different. There was usually a hope and fear whether everything would go well. With our Kern Micro Vario, that's no longer a question. I know that everything fits."
The next morning, Riccius collects the parts, inspects them, and is pleased that he can always demonstrate a zero-defect rate.
And should a tool break actually happen, the machine does not just stop. "The BPM ejects the 'problem part' and continues with a new part and a 'sister tool'. That's really brilliant," both Kevin Riccius and Pascal Leimer are pleased.
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