Truly humbled

NH Micro in the top 50 most innovative manufacturing companies in Australia! This week has been huge for manufacturing in Australia. The federal government has released some ambitious initiatives between defence spending, on-shoring commitments and manufacturing revitalisation funds. Back on earth, AMW, Australia's only manufacturing fair has been running all week, with a huge number of attendees flocking to the ICC in Darling Harbour to see the latest and greatest in hands-on manufacturing. Piggy backing off of the AMW week, AuManufacturing, Australia's leading manufacturing publication has hosted an awards ceremony, presenting Australia's top 50 most innovative companies. Brent Balinksi, editor and co-founder of the publication searched across Australia to find the top 50 most innovative manufacturing companies - we were approached last year and interviewed by Brent (https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/the-importance-of-bringing-play-to-work) and entered into the competition. Yesterday, AuManufacturing hosted a breakfast and awards ceremony showcasing all of the top 50. Proudly, we can say that we made it! Our work at NH Micro is so niche, specialised, and often secretive, that we struggle to tell the world about our journey. There are parts of our journey that are so deeply buried by NDA's and, other parts that are difficult to talk about lest we appear boastful... So, being recognised by an industry powerhouse like AuManufacturing, is really something else. Congratulations to all the entrants, category winners and the other 49 of the top 50. Josh

The most accurate ruler

 

As many of you know, we love manufacturing. Over the last 8 years (It's been that long, crazy!) we have learned a lot by focusing on making watches. However, 3 or 4 years ago, parallel precision sectors, like the medical, space, semiconductor and high-end scientific instrumentation sectors, started to become curious about our capabilities. Specifically in handling complex, highly precise and very small parts. This interest was big enough to spin-out a separate business called NH Micro. If you've been following along our newsletter and journey, you might have heard of NH Micro before - in short, watchmakers making parts for other sectors. ANSTO is the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. It's the leading research body for nuclear science. Between a particle accelerator called a synchrotron located in Melbourne, and a nuclear research reactor in Lucas Heights, south of Sydney, ANSTO employs 1300 people. Over the last 2 years ANSTO has been one of NH Micro's key clients - They use NH Micro to help manufacture very precise parts and assemblies for their research applications, and often come to us when their internal workshops, and usual vendors tell them it cannot be done. Just last week we shipped off a very complex and highly demanding project to the synchrotron in Melbourne. Currently they are building, in layman's terms, a new sensor for their particle accelerator. One of the main features of this new upgrade is that the sensor has to be able to move incredibly accurately. https://www.ansto.gov.au/x-ray-fluorescence-nanoprobe-beamline

In fact so accurately that for us, dealing in microns every day, we cannot fathom how precise this device will be. Our machines in the workshop regularly work in the micron and sub micron range. This is hard to visualise, but you can try by taking a sheet of paper, dividing the thickness of it 100 times, and you will be left with something 1 micron thick. Now, ANSTO's new device will be positioning around 300 times more accurately than that divided piece of paper. 3 Nanometers. Some more perspective. Dust that you find around the house is usually in the order of 10-20 Microns, a red blood cell is around 8 microns in diameter, the wavelength of red light is around 0.7 microns (700 nanometers), the diameter of a SARS-CoV-2 virus is around 100 nanometers (coronavirus!) and ANSTO's new device is still operating at accuracies smaller than that scale, at 3 nanometers... Just amazing. Where NH Micro fits in, is in the manufacture of the motion and metrology components of this new device. Last year we built the motion platform that actually moves in these absolutely tiny increments (Photos will be coming of this, but they are still under an embargo), and just last week we manufactured the "ruler" that measures how far this motion stage has moved. In more detail, we really manufactured the holder, that holds 3 separate rulers to measure the devices displacement. The design of this "ruler holder" was completed by a team of incredibly talented engineers at ANSTO, and we were given the task to manufacture and assemble each component.

The challenge? Everything metallic was to be made from a very special material called invar. Invar is an Iron-nickel alloy that has an incredibly small coefficient of thermal expansion. In fact, it's used widely when you really don't want things to grow or move when they heat up and cool down. At ANSTO, they are keeping their environment incredibly well controlled, but even still, fractions of a kelvin can drastically alter the performance of your measurement. The tricky part about invar is that it is quite difficult to machine. It's sort of like machining bubble-gum mixed with sand. It wears out tools, and machining geometry to tight tolerances is not trivial. Not to mention, it's egregiously expensive! Mistakes are costly! Between our Kern Micro HD 5 axis milling machine, our Makino u32j wire EDM, as well as countless hand tools and measuring tools, we were able to manufacture this one-off "ruler holder". This frame holds 3 laser interferometers, which bounce light off a surface and measure the change in displacement of the object that they are pointing at. The whole project took over 1 month in the workshop, and around 4 months overall, between waiting for material, tools and the like.

What's vital in projects like these is that we are able to handle the entire scope of work, "soup to nuts". Many workshops globally are able to mill Invar, or wire cut it, or put together components, or measure them accurately, but very few places have the key competency to do all of the above - especially in Australia. In fact, without our watchmaking knowledge, heritage, and expertise, even if we had all the machines, we would not be able to complete a project like this one. Manufacturing these ultra-complex assemblies is an engineering miracle in itself. It's been a long road to get to this point, many failures, lots of learning and teaching opportunities, but in the end, we are happy to be able to offer our services to the Australian government, people and industry. Long live Manufactured in Australia! Josh

Gear polishing - The final frontier, Part 1

By Josh Hacko

With the NH3 project, and all future watch developments, there are some unknowns that keep me up at night. Things that worry me and that are seemingly beyond reach. But the night is darkest before the dawn, and routinely in hindsight I can say that I worried too much. Not the case with gear polishing. Gear manufacture at the best of times is an extremely complex process with multiple variables and great expense associated with it. All of the complexity and cost is driven by the requirements of the "form" of the teeth. They need to be accurately machined to comply within the strict mathematical limits of the theoretical tooth engagement. Too much clearance, and the gears will have too much backlash, and will lose efficiency. Too little clearance between the gear pair, and there will be excessive wear, a loss of efficiency and in the worst case, no power transmission at all (read - it don't work)! Watchmaking has even higher requests for this already complex procedure. The concentricity of the teeth to the centre of rotation, the form of the epicycloid profile, the taper and helix angle of the form as it progresses axially - all of these things need to measured, and kept within a very precise tolerance. The process up until this point for these NH3 ratchet wheels has been as follows: design, material selection, material and tool procurement, fixture design and manufacture, gear blank generation, inspection, lapping, inspection, gear cutting, inspection, hardening, tempering, inspection, lapping... and now - gear polishing.

One of the most important requirements in the list of demands that watchmaking imposes on it's gears is low friction. This means in practical terms that the teeth of the gear need to polished to an incredibly high level to reduce the friction during operation. This is very much "form follows function". Recently I've been seeing many collectors commenting on how "well" gear teeth are being polished, as if it were a cosmetic affair. Sorry to say, for the discerning horologist, the most important and driving reason for gear polishing is either a quest for chronometric accuracy or smooth auxiliary operation (think winding and setting, etc) So, why did gear polishing keep me up at night? The technical reason: Well, polishing is a material removal process - you are removing the "high spots" of a surface in the hopes that you will even out the surface and be left with something that is much smoother. Polishing without changing the form so much that it throws you out of the tolerance zone, or being able to polish the whole profile of the tooth evenly, or polishing to a high enough grade, are all difficult challenges that need to be addressed individually, but also in the context of the previous and future operations the gear will undergo. The personal reason: It's scary. Our initial thought was to head over to Switzerland to talk to the experts. The people that make the machine to polish the teeth of gears, wheels, and pinions. Throughout our journey we have learned that talking to the experts, paying them top dollar and humbling yourself in their presence is actually the cheapest way to move forward. We did the same with Kern, with Citizen, Affolter and Makino, to make and refine all the other parts of the watch. While COVID was a large contributor, it was not the biggest obstacle to the pursuit of this knowledge. The biggest obstacle was simply that this company, the keeper of the knowledge behind this tricky science of gear polishing.... didn't exist. Elevated from a well-defined, scientific process that could be traded for some hard-earned cash - gear polishing became black magic, art, mysticism and a maybe even religion. Our next step? We needed to become the people that built the machine. To be continued.

Hello machinists

We love our machinist and engineer subscribers and we love sharing with them, and the rest of you, our workshop project updates.  And we have got a beauty today.

A silicon extrusion die for an Australian manufacturer.  The slot is 3mm wide with the radius on the points is 50 microns, cut with 100 micron wire.  Completely manufactured in our Brookvale workshop.  Again, we are not chasing jobs outside the watchmaking industry but when someone knocks on our door in desperation we are only too happy to help.  This is the fourth job for the same company and they now want us to do their entire die production for 2019/2010.  Unfortunately we had to decline.  Our focus must remain on watchmaking.

For more workshop updates follow our Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nicholashackowatch/

Perlage - the art of hand finishing

Perlage - a traditional watch part decorating technique - consists of small, overlapping circles, achieved with a rotating, grinding tip.

Yesterday, Josh designed and made a jig, and then had a first attempt at perlage on our own main plate. I say not a bad job - actually, much better than one found on mass-produced Swiss plates. There is something special going on here: a CNC machined part receiving the final touches by hand, in the old, traditional manner. Stay tuned for more!

Josh Reporting: One crazy hashtag

"Just finished 8 days of training in Germany, at the precision machine tool builder, Kern Microtechnik!  The red machine behind me in the photo below is the most accurate machine tool in the world, holding a scattered position tolerance of 0.3 microns, which is a 3000th of a human hair! In fact, the research and development team at Kern have actually drilled HOLES through human hair with Pyramide Nano - the very same mill to be used in Brookvale #makinginternalcomponentsforthefirstandonlyAustralianmadewatch. Next stop Switzerland!"