Lights Out: Technology and Automation Podcast by MakingChips

AI can write your emails, summarize your shop's performance, and help you make your next big decision. But how do you know when it deserves your confidence—and when it just sounds convincing? On this episode of Lights Out , Nick and Eric sit down with AI ethicist Rebecca Boltsma to explore the questions that rarely make it into the sales pitch. When does automating communication put a customer rel...

Most automation conversations stop at the cell. This one keeps going, through a fab shop, a machine shop, a Department of Defense contract, and eventually a coal mine. Michael McHale runs PSA Systems, an automation integrator in Pennsylvania that also fabricates, machines, and delivers turnkey projects in house. He bought the business in 2016 with four employees and about $900,000 in revenue. Toda...

When Uriel Eisen needed more capacity in his 325-square-foot shop, his first instinct was to buy a robot. But the machine wasn't the real bottleneck. Production kept getting derailed by missing material, forgotten orders, and inexpensive supplies that nobody noticed until they were gone. Uriel's path from designing spacesuits to manufacturing CNC-machined hardware eventually led him deep into Kanb...

Eric opens this episode describing a dream he had. A shop with no standalone machines. Three hundred and nine pallets moving 1,600 times a day. A central tool system holding 5,500 tools, five Fanuc robots shuttling up to 800 of them daily, and not a single crash. The punchline is that it wasn't a dream. He'd just walked through it. That shop is Norbert Kempf CNC-Technik in St. Ingbert, Germany, a...

What if the most powerful sensor on your shop floor isn't a camera or a probe or a vibration puck—but a power cord? That's the premise Lauren Dunford, co-founder and CEO of Guidewheel, brought to the show, and she explained it using a hundred toasters. Guidewheel clips a current transformer around the cord and reads the electrical heartbeat of a machine. No PLC integration, no open heart surgery,...

Every shop runs on a little tribal knowledge, the person who just knows where that tray of parts is headed and where it tends to get stuck. It works right up until they take a day off and the whole floor is hunting for a job that vanished somewhere between the mill and the heat treat rack. That gap is exactly what this episode is about: what happens when you stop guessing and start actually seeing...

Conexus Indiana is an industry-led nonprofit that pulls the state's manufacturers, logistics companies, colleges, and public sector into the same room to tackle the problems they all share: building a workforce pipeline, speeding up tech adoption, and getting shops to actually help each other. Every state is scrambling for exactly that, and Indiana seems to have cracked it. This week we sat down w...

Most shops picture automation the same way. A robot arm bolted to a machine, a green button, and a quiet promise that you can finally walk out the door at night. This episode takes that picture apart, and what replaces it is a lot more useful. The trio is back together, and to kick off a new run of episodes we brought in Sarah Wierman of Fastems, someone Nick worked alongside for five years in wor...

Every shop owner has stared at a floor full of expensive machines and thought the same thing: I need more capacity. More people. A second shift. Maybe another spindle. But the honest answer, most of the time, is that you already own the capacity you need. You just can't see how it's being used. This week we sat down with Brian Anderson, Solutions Architect at ProShop ERP, for a conversation that h...

Every shop wants the shiny new machine. Walk a showroom floor like the one at ZOLLER's Technology Days in Ann Arbor and it's hard not to feel like a kid in a candy store. But the most useful question on this episode isn't which spindle to buy next. It's whether you're actually using the ones you already own . We sat down at the ZOLLER Smart Manufacturing Summit with Walt Swenton, Senior Manager of...

Recorded live from the DN Solutions open house near Chicago, this special crossover episode between  Lights Out  and  Buy the Numbers  dives deep into what modern automation actually looks like inside growing machine shops. This isn't theory from a conference stage. It's a real-time conversation about throughput, utilization, machine strategy, and how shops can scale smarter without simply throwin...

Part 2 of Lights Out Lenses  moves deeper into the automation journey at Advanced Machine & Fabricating—this time through the eyes of engineering, programming, quality, and ownership. If Part 1 was about feeding the beast, Part 2 is about building the systems, standards, and culture that keep it alive. Director of Engineering & Programming Forrest Vaught shares how automation forced his team to re...

What does automation actually look like when you're in the middle of it—not from a vendor demo or a conference stage, but inside a real shop, with real constraints, real people, and real stakes? This episode of  Lights Out  kicks off a new series format— Lights Out Lenses —where the story of automation is told through multiple perspectives inside the same company. And not just any company, but ADV...

Automation has a reputation problem. It's often painted as something reserved for massive factories, predictable part runs, and deep pockets. But what happens when a small, high-mix shop decides to challenge every one of those assumptions—and wins? In this episode of  Lights Out , we sit down with Katie Murphy from Arcamed, an 80-person medical manufacturing company that did what most shops think...

What happens when a shop that's already running lights-out decides to push even further? The Lights Out team returns to Imago Manufacturing nearly a year after their first visit to see how Ryan's lights-out vision has evolved. What they find is a shop that looks similar on the surface, same team, same footprint, but dramatically more capable thanks to thoughtful automation, improved workflows, and...

Additive manufacturing has been "the future" of manufacturing for decades. And yet, for many shops, it still feels just out of reach—either too expensive, too complex, or too uncertain to justify. So where does it actually stand today? In this episode of  Lights Out , we sit down with Mark Barfoot, VP of Global Sales at Xact Metal, to cut through the noise. With more than two decades of experience...

What happens when you take months of serious conversations about automation ROI, additive manufacturing, machine monitoring, adaptive controls, and digital factory strategy… and turn them into Jeopardy? Chaos. Competitive chaos. In this special episode of  Lights Out , Eric Nekich steps into full game-show-host mode and challenges Dave Vuyk, Nick Goellner, and special guest Mike Payne to prove the...

There's been a murder on the shop floor. Or at least… that's how this episode begins. In this creative, detective-themed installment of  Lights Out , Dave Vuyk, Eric Nekich, and Nick Goellner investigate what happened to the once red-hot promise of collaborative robots. A decade ago, cobots were projected to revolutionize machine shops. They were marketed as affordable, easy-to-deploy, cage-free a...

Is hybrid manufacturing just a buzzword, or is it the next logical evolution of modern machining? In this episode of  Lights Out , David Vuyk, Nick Goellner, and Eric Nekich sit down with  Dr. Jason Jones , CEO and founder of  Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies , to unpack what hybrid manufacturing actually means and why it's gaining real traction inside production environments. Rather than framing...

What does the future of manufacturing look like when it's built by someone who has never known a world without digital tools, automation, or on-demand learning? In this episode of Lights Out, the hosts sit down with Michael King, founder of Munkworks, whose story feels almost implausible until you hear it unfold. Michael bought his first CNC machine as a teenager, owns a five-axis machining center...

Automation doesn't end when the system is powered on. In fact, that's often where the real work begins. In the third and final episode of this Lights Out series, the conversation shifts from planning and justification to execution, measurement, and long-term performance. After covering market forces driving automation adoption and breaking down ROI math in the first two episodes, this installment...

Automation is exploding across the manufacturing world, but the real differentiator isn't the robot, pallet pool, or software you buy—it's whether you know how to calculate ROI the  right  way. In this episode of  Lights Out , we break down the financial side of automation in plain language so every shop owner, operator, and leader can make smarter investment decisions with confidence. This is the...

Before a shop can automate confidently, it has to understand one thing clearly: ROI drives every great automation decision. In this episode of  Lights Out , David Vuyk and Eric Nekich kick off a multi-part series on Automation ROI—focusing not on hype or shiny tech, but on the real metrics and methods that determine whether automation will pay off or become an expensive paperweight. With "Jolly St...

As we dive into this episode of Lights Out, we sit down with someone who's seen automation evolve from pencil drawings and flame-cut templates to fully integrated robotic systems: our friend and longtime industry leader, Mike Gamache. For decades, Mike has lived at the intersection of machining, fabrication, automation, and continuous improvement, and we couldn't be more excited to bring his exper...

What do law enforcement, SWAT operations, and CNC machining have in common? More than you'd think. In this episode of Lights Out , hosts Nick Goellner, Eric Nekich, and Dave Vuyk welcome  Johnny Goode , President and Co-owner of  MSP Manufacturing  in Bloomington, Indiana—a precision aerospace manufacturer that's rapidly transforming its operations with automation and digital processes. Johnny's j...