Machine Shop Mastery

What does it take to compete globally as a small family machine shop? I sat down with Corbin Embrey of Shamrock Precision to dig into how he's approached it, and the answer is a mix of inventory strategy, geographic spread, and a willingness to admit when something isn't your strength. We spend time on supply lead demand, where Shamrock holds raw material, tooling, and machine hours ahead of custo...

What happens to a family-owned machine shop when there's no next generation ready to take over? Too often, the doors close, the equipment goes to auction, and decades of knowledge scatter. Mark Hagedorn saw a chance to write a different ending—for two shops at once. In this episode, I sit down with Mark just 40 days after he acquired Altenburg Machine & Fabrication and Erlbacher Gear & Machine Wor...

Buying a machine shop looks simple on a spreadsheet. Leland Licciardi and Kirsten Failing share what it looks like once you  own it. They took over a shop founded in 1944 four years ago, and I wanted to walk through how they got there: the two years of deciding, the due diligence, the SBA loans and seller financing, and what they'd do differently if they bought another one. The first four years we...

Most of us were taught to guard our processes. Brett Lister built a group around doing the opposite—and it's paying him back in work, tooling, and knowledge. I sat down with Brett to talk about Open Tolerance, the collaboration group he runs out of B&B Dynamic Machining, and what happens when small shops decide to help each other instead of fighting over scraps. The group started as a way to swap...

Every machine shop has an origin story, but not many start with a drill press on the family dining room table and grow into a company machining 276-inch wing spars for military aircraft. In this episode, I sit down with Joey Schmucker and Alyssa Da Costa, the brother-and-sister team leading Volumatic, a third-generation family-owned machine shop in Macon, Georgia. What started with their grandfath...

A beautifully machined bicycle component might get your attention. But what does it take to build a company that earns that same loyalty for 50 years? In this episode, I sit down with Kirby Bedsaul, president of Chris King Precision Components, to explore the business behind an iconic cycling brand. From bearing production to the finishing details that make their parts look like jewelry, there's a...

Plenty of shops machine parts to a tenth and then run the business on guesswork. Sebastian Montalvo is building M3 Aerospace the other way, with the same precision behind the desk as on the floor, and three years in, that's exactly why they're growing as fast as they are. I'll be honest, this one got to me. He's running a shop that behaves like it's been around for twenty years with a hundred peop...

Gavin Giguere went from zero to a running machine shop in a matter of months. A conversation with a childhood friend about wanting his own shop, an LLC filed two weeks later, then five weeks of gutting and renovating a building while two new machines landed on the floor. His first order shipped on time, and so has every order since. What I wanted out of this conversation was the whole startup sequ...

Assa Gill didn't grow up dreaming about owning a machine shop. He came to Canada from a small village in Punjab, discovered CNC machining through a college course, and spent nearly nine years developing his skills on the shop floor. But the idea of building something of his own never went away. That idea became real when Assa bought his first CNC mill—before he had a building, a customer, or even...

Alex Fitzgerald got the keys to his first factory on January 6, 2025. Eighteen months later Isembard has 14 factories across the US, the UK, France and Germany, just under 100 people, and a business model nobody in this industry has run at scale. Ten of those factories he doesn't own. They belong to franchisees. The franchise piece is the part I keep turning over. Before he started, Alex went thro...

Wil Jorgensen started a machine shop at 22 with a $4,000 screw machine he found on Craigslist. He's 26 now, running Evolution CNC in Wenatchee, Washington, with seven people and a pallet automated 5-axis machine that runs close to around the clock. What makes this conversation worth your time isn't the growth curve though. It's how he thinks. Wil and his team wrote a four page manifesto before the...

After more than 300 conversations across  Machine Shop Mastery, MakingChips,  and  Manufacturing Transformed , I wrote a book. It's called  Precision Manufacturing, Precision Business , and I keep saying "we" wrote it because that's the truth. I got the words onto the page, but the hard lessons, ideas, and wisdom came from this community. The premise is simple:  you'd never ship a titanium part at...

I sat down with Randy Swan, who started a Swiss machining shop at 60 after a 34 year career working for other people. Five years in, RPM is growing more than 60 percent a year. Ask Randy what's behind that number and he doesn't start with machines or markets. He starts with the 14 people on his floor . He hires for character, capability, and values, and he puts experience close to last. He looks f...

I sat down with Chris Beck, the founder of Innovative 3D Manufacturing in Franklin, Indiana, and the line that stuck with me was simple. Everything he owns is leveraged into this company. That is what skin in the game actually looks like, and it is the reason his team shows up at 2 a.m. on a Sunday when a job is on the line. Innovative is one of the few shops built around metal additive, laser pow...

Some businesses have a founding story. HFW Industries has an 80-year one, and it starts in a World War II foundry. I sat down with Jack Watson, the fourth generation to work in his family's business in Buffalo. HFW does turnkey thermal spray and hard facing, the coating work that keeps power plants, turbines, and other critical infrastructure running. But the throughline of our whole conversation...

Most of us in the machining world have thought about it at least once. What if I stopped quoting other people's parts and built something of my own? For a lot of shop owners that idea stays stuck in the someday pile, because the path from a good idea to a product people actually buy feels impossible to map. This episode is about someone who mapped it. I sat down with Josiah Fallaise of FDF Race Sh...

This one's a first for me. In over a hundred episodes I've never had someone from a public company on Machine Shop Mastery, and Randy Altschuler from Xometry turned out to be exactly the kind of guest I hoped he'd be. Down to earth, honest about what's hard, and genuinely fired up about the industry we all work in. We spend a good chunk of the hour on something Randy says out loud that I've felt f...

Most shops chase the big order. Andrew Henry built Henry Holsters by doing the opposite, and it's hard to argue with the results. I sat down with Andrew for what turns into a masterclass on running lean without ever saying the word lean. He walks through how a holster company in Spencer, Indiana turned tight inventory, fast changeovers, and short cash cycles into a flywheel that keeps spinning, no...

Most machine shop owners will talk your ear off about spindles and tolerances. Ask Mike Marzetta what makes Altek work and he says the word  love . Not as a slogan. As the actual thing holding a 200-person advanced manufacturing company together. Mike runs Altek in Spokane, a shop his dad started 50 years ago that's grown into full contract manufacturing: machining, injection molding, assembly, te...

Most family shops don't get a clean handoff. Somebody gets sick, the calendar moves faster than the plan, and one person has to decide whether to step in or let the doors close. That's the story Christy Subia lived at Bedard Machine, and it's why I wanted her on the show. Bedard is a 95% aerospace shop in Brea, California with 23 people and 17 machines. And four years ago it was almost none of wha...

Most shop owners who hit 50 employees, steady profit, and a fourth generation coming up behind them would be tempted to coast. Andrew Borg decided to double down instead. Not because he has to, he's quick to say the shop is profitable right where it is, but because he wants to build something that outlasts him.  A big part of that answer is automation. Borg Design runs a fleet of cobots that load...

Almost every shop owner I talk to wants to grow. Far fewer build something that can survive a real downturn. That's the thread running through my whole conversation with Chris Welch of Swissomation, and it's why I wanted him on after we met at Machining on the Summit. Chris runs a high-mix Swiss machining operation, two locations and around 120 spindles, and just about everything he does comes bac...

In this episode of  Machine Shop Mastery , I got to sit down with Kenny Williams of Native Aerospace and Defense. Kenny has a really interesting background because he did not come into manufacturing through the traditional path. He started in technology, worked with major ERP companies, served as a CIO for several manufacturing companies, and saw firsthand how deeply connected systems, process, pe...

When Ashley Parent first appeared on Machine Shop Mastery, Mills Machine Works was fighting for survival. After the unexpected loss of her father, who founded the company in 1995, Ashley and her siblings inherited not only a family business but also the challenge of keeping it alive. Almost overnight, the shop lost roughly half of its revenue as customers questioned whether the next generation cou...

When I sat down with Casimir Sienkiewicz (CAZ) from CazTek, I immediately connected with his story because it reminded me so much of the journeys so many shop owners go through. What started with a Bridgeport mill in a garage has evolved over the last 22 years into a growing engineering and precision machining company tackling everything from advanced prototypes to 5-axis machining, Swiss work, au...