Back on the engineering floor in K2, I spotted this 8-layer circuit board for the Nagra VI which you'd really expect to find in military or medical equipment.
These engineers shook their heads upon learing that I work on a Windows platform. They're diehard Mac of course.
As mentioned earlier, Nagra was a very early adopter of SMD technology and this densely populated circuit board shows it in action.
The portable concept of specific recording gear naturally goes hand in hand with batteries. Here engineering had DC cells on a bench to verify vendor specifications and long-term behavior.
This engineer designs mechanics.
Here is another Nagra VI which succeeds the Nagra-D/DII multi-track digital recorders. Its hardware is now software driven to allow for easy adaptation via new code. This machine comes with a removable Lithium-Ion battery box, a mains power supply, a 120GB internal hard disk and removable flash memory. Once Nagra's consumer audio division decides to enter the music server category, we all better watch out.
Like most Nagra employees who spend their entire lives with the company, transformer expert Siegfried worked here for 46 years before he'll have segued into well-deserved retirement in 2010.
Some of the wire used for specialty transformers is just one third the thickness of a human hair. How one avoids breakage during winding with such conductor eluded me entirely but Siegfried merely grinned.
Here are two terminated toroids.
One of the many machines in the winding room.
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A more complex transformer with six multi-strand windings.
Toroidal cores await winding.
Stacked VPA input transformers.
Various unattended testing stations back on the production floor.