Big stud

 

For the last 12 months we have been working on our next release from NHW. While it's still far too early to talk about the watch, I can say that it's pushing the limits of our manufacturing, in the best way possible. In this photo below, you can see a component called a "stud". It's an incredibly small part that holds onto the hairspring of the watch. Like all components in a watch, the stud is very tightly toleranced, and requires the utmost care in design, manufacturing, assembly and decoration.  Our in-house, NHW stud is made from titanium, which is very rare - usually studs are made from either steel, which is magnetic and may influence the very fine motion of the hairspring, or from brass. Titanium offers superior strength, anti-magnetic properties, and is light, corrosion resistant and holds a very good aesthetic finish.  Manufacturing something this small is a feat of our machinists here at NHW. Burrs, cracks, nicks, or any other defect totally destroy the function or aesthetic quality of the part. Even a small scratch, a 10th of the size of your hair, would render this stud useless! 10 years ago if you told me that this part was going to be in my palm, made by our internal workshop... I wouldn't have believed it, but here we are. Modern artisanal watchmaking, Manufactured in Australia. Josh Hacko

Crème de la crème

 

ANCA is Australia’s only machine tool builder. Established 50 years ago by Pat Boland and Pat McCluskey, ANCA has been manufacturing the machines that manufacture the tools that are used in CNC machines worldwide and across all industries, to make parts. In short, ANCA are at the bleeding edge of the manufacturing chain. It would not be a stretch to say that ANCA have influenced every single object around you in one way or another. Based in Melbourne, and employing over 1000 people worldwide, ANCA believes strongly in Australian Manufacturing. NH Micro is a supplier to ANCA, and last year I had the pleasure to walk through their manufacturing facilities in Bayswater North - truly incredible. They are completely vertically integrated, making and assembling nearly every component of their machine in-house. This is a level of industrial strength that you would only see in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and the US.   Just this weekend, the two Pat’s – Boland and McCluskey, were honoured by our government, each being presented with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), in recognition of their achievements in Australian Manufacturing. The story of ANCA is far more in-depth than just a few paragraphs here, and to capture it, the company has filmed a documentary sharing their journey. It is one of the most inspirational Australian Manufacturing stories I’ve ever seen. I can highly recommend watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6NBl9gEJ1k Josh Hacko

Update from the workshop

 

Manufacturing complex parts for our watches, as well as for industries outside of watchmaking, requires complex metrology, too. In this case we are seeing what the limits are of our new Zeiss Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM).  CMM's use tactile measuring devices in the form of ruby spheres to very accurately "feel" how big (or small) a part is. On our new CMM from Zeiss, we've been able to use this method to measure parts with a certainty below 1um - that's such a small value, it's difficult to even comprehend! For reference, a human blood cell is around 7um in diameter. Tactile measurement has worked incredibly well for us, and generally works very well when the feature sizes are relatively large - so you can use a large ruby sphere (called a stylus). But, part of the reason of why we purchased this particular machine was due to its very unique ability to use incredibly small styli. Generally these ruby spheres are around 1mm in diameter, or larger - however this can pose problems when the parts you are trying to measure are very small in and of themselves! For example, measuring a hole that is 0.5mm in diameter, you would need a ruby that is significantly smaller than the hole size!  Last week we pulled out our new 0.2mm stylus - this ruby is just two sheets of paper in diameter, or about 3 human hairs wide! It's dwarfed against the tip of a ballpoint pen, and requires a special ceramic sphere to calibrate it in our Zeiss CMM, shown below.

These probe tips or styli are manufacturing marvels themselves - here is a great video walk through of how these tiny measuring devices are manufactured! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3oINXdHLNw When we set out to do watch manufacturing in Australia, I never thought we would be doing this! Josh Hacko