From Outer Space To The Inner Ear | Hudson manufacturer on the cutting edge of several industries
Perhaps you’ll notice that there’s no video on the wbjournal.com website to go along with this column. Perhaps you’ll also notice that there’s no picture of Garry MacDonald, vice president of business development at Hypertronics in Hudson, here either.
That’s all because Hypertronics, from an industrial park just off Main Street in Hudson, develops and manufactures high-tech connectors for some of the most demanding and sensitive applications in the world.
Some of those applications, the company can talk about openly. Others it cannot. In almost every case, the Hypertronics connectors being used are under fiercely protected patents and Smiths Interconnect, Hypertronics parent, doesn’t want its secrets getting out, and justifiably so.
On a recent visit to Hypertronics, Garry MacDonald, the company’s vice president of business development, detailed some of the more interesting places the Hyper-tronics’ unique connectors can be found.
To Hudson And Beyond
Hypertronics recently sent circuit board-to-circuit board connectors into space on the shuttle Atlantis as part of the mission to replace components of the Hubble Space Telescope.
MacDonald said it was particularly pleasing to hear that the astronaut that installed the connector commented that the one being replaced was still in good condition.
And that’s the company’s forte: connectors for equipment that must not fail. Hypertronics connectors can also be found on the Mars Science Lab rover and in a wide variety of military and medical equipment.
What makes the connectors so reliable is their “wire basket” design. Connectors have male and female ends and the female ends of Hypertronics’ connectors contain wires that appear almost like the rifling of a gun barrel. The natural elasticity of those wires maintains a full 360-degree connection with the male side of the connection, bringing the likelihood of the connections’ failure as close to zero as it can get.
MacDonald showed me a connector that, in size, wouldn’t seem out of place in a home stereo. He showed me others that were the size of a fist and still others that are as small as 0.3 millimeters.
Those different sizes represent the markets that Hypertronics serves and also highlight the way the business has changed.
The company, which was founded in the 1960s, used to produce a great deal of equipment for heavy industry. These days, about half of what it produces is for the medical industry and about 40 percent is for aerospace. Only about 10 percent of the company’s output is for heavy industry.
MacDonald said one of the company’s biggest challenges is staying out in front of industry trends. The company is busy making components for unmanned military vehicles as the armed forces try to get those vehicles to fly higher over greater distances for longer periods of time.
Some of the more miniscule Hypertronics connectors find their way into medical devices like cutting edge external artificial hearts, which can be made smaller and lighter with Hypertronics connectors, as well as implantable defribillators, hearing devices and other equipment.
Whether it’s military or health care-related, the company has to keep a close eye on the federal government. Minor changes in defense spending can become major problems for suppliers. The massive health care reform effort currently under way has companies like Hypertronics trying to figure out where they’ll have a niche.
Here at home, the company has another, perhaps more minor problem: Nobody knows they’re here.
Well, they are. And its offices are in Hudson and it does about 60 percent of its manufacturing at a pristine facility on Brent Drive.
Got news for our Industrial Strength column? E-mail WBJ Managing Editor Matthew L. Brown at mbrown@wbjournal.com.
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