NH Micro – Australian precision parts manufacturer

Astronomy Industry Partner Profile:  NH Micro – Australian precision parts manufacturer

Nicholas Hacko Watchmaker (NHW) has been manufacturing precision timepieces in Australia since 2016. Born from a desire to reinvigorate watchmaking capability in Australia, NHW developed the capacity to make up to 85% of their watches in-house by 2020. Things then took a surprising turn for the Sydney-based watchmaker, when an unexpected partnership with astronomy instrumentation builders created the potential to move into new, untapped markets.  

This was the beginning of NH Micro, a new business arm of NHW. Precision parts manufacturing is at the heart of NH Micro, and since its inception the company has grown significantly over a short period of time. Its client base now includes customers within major government bodies, the medical industry, and the space/aerospace sector. They are also starting to slowly move into the defence sector and have started to reinvest in the business to the tune of $1M per year. All of which Technical Director Josh Hacko attributes to the first, relatively small job they did with a team of astronomers led by Dr Julia Bryant from the University of Sydney – building precision parts for the HECTOR instrument.  

HECTOR, an instrument designed to survey up to 15,000 galaxies, has since been completed and mounted to the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). When great results started coming in, Dr Bryant and her team were able to celebrate its success thanks (in part) to the precision parts made by NHW. While excited to see the instrument working well, Josh Hacko could also see a new opportunity on the horizon for NHW. Creating precision parts for everyone and anyone who needed them. On the ground, in Australia. 

With the benefit of hindsight, Hacko can see it was the perfect introduction for a brand-new business model.

Hacko believes that the key to NH Micro’s success is education. For HECTOR, they showed Dr Bryant and her team what was possible – that bespoke precision parts could be made locally, with a small lead time, and then replicated quickly. Conversely, Hacko and his team also learned enormous amounts about their own capability, which Hacko believes to be unique in the world of precision engineering and manufacturing in Australia.  

NH Micro has followed this model with each new client – learning about what their customer needs and how they can pivot to make it happen, while also educating each client as to what is possible. Hacko knows that many customers who need high precision parts are trying to build something very specific, but not necessarily something with known parameters. A prototype, for example, either to create something new or scale up something that already exists. Educating these customers as to what is possible has become a recurring theme for NH Micro, though Hacko sees this as a good thing – even when it presents a challenge.

An example of this can be seen with NH Micro’s recent work building an essential component for a new beamline at Australia’s Synchrotron. The Synchrotron is an advanced scientific facility based in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, owned and operated by Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). The synchrotron uses magnets to accelerate beams of light around its enormous ring-like structure. As they approach the speed of light, the beams are directed into structures, known as beamlines, similar in size to shipping containers that sit just outside the rings. Various beamlines collect different types of energy, from x-rays to infrared beams, focusing them toward samples that are being studied for scientific research. In close collaboration with synchrotron scientists, Hacko and his team built a robot to position samples within a beamline currently under construction – a job he describes as his most complex to date.  

While ANSTO presented a unique challenge, they also proved how well NH Micro can adapt to suit their customer’s requirements. Including ANSTO, the NHW group currently lists 150 clients, with 90% of those added since the creation of NH Micro. This year, approximately 50% of total revenue for the group came from the NH Micro arm alone. Between both companies, 11 people are employed – four of which are working full time for NH Micro. Not bad for a company that only started operations in 2020. The group has also been able to reinvest all profit from the NH Micro side of the business into their workshops, capability, staff, and development processes – what Hacko calls the “journey of precision manufacturing”. This equates to about $1M a year going back into the business. Without NH Micro, Hacko is certain that this scale of reinvestment wouldn’t be possible.  

Coming full circle, NH Micro recently teamed up with another group of astronomy instrumentation builders – Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) at Macquarie University. The project is part of a collaboration between AAO and lead partner, Advanced Navigation, who are set to deliver a sensor called LUNA (Laser measurement Unit for Navigational Aid) to US-based space systems company, Intuitive Machines. Part of NASA’s ongoing Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, Intuitive Machines will mount LUNA onboard its Nova-C lander, slated for a mission to the moon in the next couple of years. LUNA’s sensor, using AAO’s focused multi-beam optical laser device (known as a collimator), will allow the lander to safely touch down on the moon without any real-time assistance from mission control.  

Hacko was introduced to AAO’s project leader, Lee Spitler, at an Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) Industry Engagement workshop in November 2023. Spitler recognised the skill and adaptability of NH Micro when he saw Hacko present during the event. As a result, NH Micro is now handling the precision machining and optical head assembly that will be used by AAO to build the collimator for LUNA. 

If this wasn’t enough, there is also more work on the horizon for NH Micro. Larger government bodies are becoming very interested in their capability, which Hacko puts down to the fact that this capability has not existed in Australia for a very long time. He notes that the history of precision engineering and manufacturing in Australia can be traced alongside large industry trends. The automotive industry, for example, generated a lot of precision manufacturing. As did the gambling industry, with the manufacture of pokies machines. When these industries left Australia, or the requirement for manufacturing was replaced by computer software (in the case of pokies machines), that precision engineering disappeared as well. Hacko explains that these capabilities don’t exist out of thin air – there has to be a need.