A small favour to ask

Yesterday, Josh and myself interviewed yet another young man, keen to move to Sydney. A Danish machinist, 23 years young, with one year of post-apprenticeship experience in making complex titanium parts for the medical sector. "Do you really understand how far and how remote Australia is from  the rest of the world?". He simply said, yes, I do. "There are countless high tech workshops in Europe - so why us?" - we insisted. "What you have to offer is super unique, and a chance to learn how to operate a variety of machines is priceless. I wish to learn and to grow".   For the past few years, I am struggling to explain to my self the following paradox: how come that there are plenty of kids who would leave their parents, friends, home, then travel half way around the world just for an opportunity to learn machining and engineering skills, while we struggle to attract local Aussie kids? What is wrong with us? Or what is wrong with our own young people? And I am still loking for an answer.   Right now, we have two Canadians; Declan, a machinist, and Emily, an office assistant. They left the comfort of their home for an opportunity to visit Australia, learn new skills and have some fun along the way. And they are having a ball. They are well paid, appreciated, supported and happy. We are literally begging them to extend their stay. So clearly, there is nothing wrong with us.   Quite frankly, when the idea to open a high tech watchmaking workshop first crossed my mind, I was expecting to be inundated with 'please take me' employment requests. It's not happening. Finding young and enthusiastic people to join us, is without any question the most difficult and most challenging aspect of running a business.   But I am not giving up. There is a chance that you may have a smart kid endlessly playing games, bored to death, unsure about the future, who would greatly benefit from some hands on work. I know - you don't want your kid to end up on a factory floor, working for me. You want him to finish university, get a well paid job, a house overlooking the harbour. But not all kids end up as CEOs, and the very few who do, aren’t genuinely happy.   Hand me over your kid for a year a two. Josh will teach them everything he knows in a very structured manufacturing facility, run almost like a military operation. After  a couple of years, they may decide to stay with us and chase microns - or they can pursue the dream you have pre-planned for them. I am prepared to take a chance. Are you as well?

The Sydney Watches Pty Ltd workshop is located in Brookvale, in the Northern Beaches and specialises in manufacturing high precision mechanical components for watchmaking, scientific, optics, medical and space industries.   PS I would appreciate if you can forward this on to your Facebook / fav social media. We need any help we can get, and we need it fast.

Manufactured in Australia update:

 

This week the "Manufactured in Australia" project made one of the most important decisions for its future. On Monday we have commissioned the delivery and installation of a KERN MicroHD – which is the latest generation of 5-axis milling machines by German manufacturer KERN, the world leader in micro machining. For the last six months, our precision machines and fully equipped watchmaking workshop have been getting a lot of attention from the broader manufacturing sector. Australians do some amazing manufacturing work, and some of the companies and institutions that do this work have been searching for reliable and capable manufacturing partners. Medical devices, space-borne devices, tools for precision assembly, satellite parts and parts for other watchmakers have all recently passed through our workshop. When we started the project of manufacturing watches in Australia from the ground up, we fully expected that our capabilities would get this attention, but the scale and growth of that interest surprised us. So much so, that we were actually very quickly swamped with work. This had some fairly large implications - Our own watchmaking production became stop-start, the momentum we would gain in making a few parts was lost when large customer projects came in, it also meant that our production schedule also filled up really quickly. Currently the next 8 weeks are completely booked out with work for our clients. What a nice problem to have!  Our first mill, a Kern Pyramid Nano, which is capable of operating at sub-micron levels, is running to its maximum capacity leaving us no choice but to expand. The Kern MicroHD is Kern's newest machine, with their most advanced technology - it is more accurate, precise, stable, reliable, dynamic and productive than our current machine, possibly even by one order of magnitude. When we imported our previous machine, it was arguably the most accurate machine in Australia. The HD is not only the most accurate machine in Australia, but is also the first machine of its type in all of Asia. This is absolutely massive news for Australia. Not once in the history of this country have we had the capability to manufacture parts with a machine of this precision. Machines like this are not sold to small businesses, only to large companies (Rolex, IWC etc.) that use them solely for internal use. However our plan is to make this machine available to parallel precision industries, which demand a high level of accuracy. For the first time, this capability has been made available to the Australian Engineering industry, on Australian soil. Our MicroHD is now being built in Germany - the build process takes 7 months - and it is expected to be delivered by the end of this year. Final installation and calibration is scheduled for March 2022. MicroHD brochure: shorturl.at/oIKX2 Josh Hacko, Brookvale

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!"