ADVANCED MANUFACTURING · SWITZERLAND
maxon
The tiny Swiss motors that drive everything from surgery to Mars rovers
Original schematic illustration · created for the Atlas — stylised technical drawing, not a photograph.
01 In brief
On 5 December 1961, Interelectric AG was founded in Sachseln, a lakeside village in the canton of Obwalden, as a production site for the Swiss company BRAUN. Out of that workshop grew maxon — today a group of around 3,200 people and one of the world's leading manufacturers of precision electric drive systems: DC motors, gearheads, encoders and complete drive systems measured in millimetres and grams.
maxon's reputation was sealed in space. Its drives have flown on NASA's Mars rovers since Sojourner in 1997, and both the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter — the first aircraft to fly on another planet — carry maxon motors. The same engineering culture, applied on Earth, puts maxon drives into surgical robots, prosthetics, industrial automation and demanding lab equipment.
02 Why it's interesting
- 01 It is precision miniaturization at its purest: motors a few centimetres across that must survive vacuum, radiation, temperature swings and launch shocks — and then work flawlessly for years.
- 02 The Mars heritage is real and repeated: from Sojourner to Perseverance and Ingenuity, Swiss mountain-valley engineering has ridden along on humanity's flagship planetary missions.
- 03 maxon shows how a global specialist can remain deeply rooted in one place: the headquarters and a large share of production are still in Sachseln, a village of a few thousand people.
- 04 Its ironless-core motor design — light, efficient, with no cogging — remains a reference point for fine-motion control across industries.
03 How it works
A maxon drive is a system: a DC motor, often paired with a gearhead and a position sensor, engineered as one unit.
The heart of the classic maxon motor is its coreless (ironless) rotor: a self-supporting basket of copper windings that spins in the magnetic field without an iron core. This eliminates cogging and keeps the rotor light — ideal for precise, responsive motion.
Commutation — switching current through the windings as the rotor turns — is handled by brushes in the classic design or electronically in brushless motors. Adding a gearhead multiplies torque; adding an encoder tells the controller exactly where the shaft is.
For space missions, engineers must re-qualify everything: lubricants that don't evaporate in vacuum, materials that tolerate radiation, mechanisms that must work with no possibility of repair. maxon's collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory drove decades of refinement of exactly these margins.
| Founded | 5 December 1961 (as Interelectric AG) |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Sachseln, canton of Obwalden |
| Employees | ~3,200 |
| Mars heritage | Drives on NASA rovers from Sojourner (1997) to Perseverance (2020), and on the Ingenuity helicopter |
| Core products | DC motors, brushless motors, gearheads, encoders, drive systems |
Company facts per maxon's own published history and industry coverage.
04 The organisation behind it
maxon operates as an independently structured Swiss group with production and sales sites across Europe, the USA and Asia. Its engineering organization works closely with customers — particularly in medical technology, robotics and aerospace — often co-developing drives for single applications.
05 In the real world
On Earth, maxon drives move the tools of minimally invasive surgery, dose insulin pumps, position laboratory instruments, focus professional optics and animate countless industrial machines. In space, they have handled Mars soil samples, steered rovers and trimmed the rotor of a helicopter flying in an atmosphere one percent as dense as Earth's — a résumé few component makers can match.
06 Can you visit?
The Sachseln headquarters is a working development and production site rather than a public museum. Visits are arranged for professional, educational and media groups rather than walk-in tourists.
If you are travelling in Obwalden, the Sarnen–Sachseln area makes for an instructive detour on the theme of hidden industrial champions; check with the company for any current visitor arrangements.