CNC for Other Cool Things

Creativity and crowd-funding can be a powerful combination. Learn more about how self-taught CNC machinist and PCNC 1100 owner, Brad Martin, took a creative desgin idea and a gamble on Kickstarter to successfully launch a new product. His custom desgined bottle opener was only the beginning of what has lead to several popular Kickstarter projects and the path to his own small business.

Twin Cities father and son design team, David and Lynn Fliger developed the Fusion Plate, an Arca-Swiss style quick release plate for a camera tripod, with a PCNC 1100. The Fusion Plate allows a photographer to quickly move from shoulder strap to tripod without any need to thread anything on or off their camera

For Ariel Bolanos, 2013 marks the second year as owner and operator of Boss & Sons, LLC a small family-owned machine shop located in DeForest, Wisconsin. Now in his early 30’s, Ariel’s machining background started at the age of twelve under the instruction of his father Jorge.

With an engineering background, an established career in the aerospace and medical industries and power tools, Rob Green is no stranger to the machine shop.

Playing laser tag for the past seventeen years, Tom Baker of Lafayette, Indiana has turned a teenage hobby into a successful business—all while innovating the future of the game.

David Stanavich’s career in fabrication and machining began back in 1989, after studying painting and fine art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

At age 26, John Seaber knows more about running a successful business than most his age. A recent electrical engineering graduate from Missouri University of Science and Technology (Rolla), John is the owner and president of JDS Labs, Inc. in Glen Carbon, Illinois. JDS Labs has quickly made a name for themselves in the audiophile industry as a manufacturer of customized, high-performance headphone amplifiers and digital-to-analog converters (DACs).

When Dave and Lynda Rygmyr purchased NorthWest Short Line in 2008, they became the new owners of the world's largest manufacturer of model railroad upgrade and repair parts. NorthWest Short Line manufactures wheels, axles, and gearboxes. If you've got a model locomotive that's 50 years old, odds are the Rygmyrs can help you find a spare part.

For brothers Troy and Gary Chatmajian, machining is more than a way of life—it's their legacy. As fourth-generation metal workers, they are part of a family tree brimming with craftsmen who have been working with metal since the late 1800s.

Jeff Rasnake of Rockfish, Virginia purchased a PCNC 1100 from Tormach just over three years ago. Working full time as a Manufacturing Engineer in the Maritime Navigation Industry, Rasnake's evenings are spent in his home machine shop.

Launching the OCULUS Surveillance and Telepresence Robot with a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign, Colin Adamson’s open hardware project recently earned his company, Xaxxon Technologies, a spot in Entrepeneur Magazine’s top 100 Brilliant Companies of 2012. Describing himself as both a maker and a hacker, manufacturing and design projects spanning nearly two decades have led up to this honor.

In October 2007, machine shop owner Steve Seebold went into the hospital for routine surgery. Five bypass surgeries and a new aortic heart valve later, Seebold made the decision to sell his business and take an early retirement.

IT Program Manager by day, maker by night, Kent Myers writes extensively about his interests and innovations on his popular blog, KentMyers.net.

After seeing an advertisement for a PCNC 1100 in Livesteam Magazine, Dick Hofsheier of Banks, Oregon scheduled a demonstration with a mill owner registered in the Tormach referral network.

In his home machine shop in the mountains of New Mexico, Tormach PCNC 1100 owner Mike Sherick has many projects. From custom musical instruments to personal aircraft and astro-photography, Sherick is currently building a 24” remote control (RC) telescope for his personal observatory.

Submitting a variety photos that showcase the breadth of Joe Theriot’s machining talents, this customer showcase submission comes to us from the bayous of southern Louisiana. Contract welder by trade, Joe uses his PCNC 1100 at Theriot Contracting to fulfill orders ranging from custom pieces to large-scale industrial jobs.

Engineers at Desert Star Systems in California used a PCNC 1100 with ATC and 4^th Axis to machine molds for the flipper tag project—a solar-powered radio tag worn on the flippers of sea otters. Flipper tags are used by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor the behavior of sea otters and collect data about the animals’ behavior.

Paul Breed is an unreasonable man. His video post on YouTube, one of many online artifacts that detail his progress so far, is titled “Why Neighbors Think I’m Crazy.” For the camera, Breed demonstrates the injector flow rate for his lunar lander, which he is building in his garage.

While there wasn't an “A-HA!” moment for firefighter and inventor Tyson Schultz, there was an ongoing process of developing a new product for firemen that can both make their lives both easier and potentially safer.

Greg Marshall, a marine biologist, was scuba diving in Belize in 1986 when he saw a suckerfish hitching a ride on a shark’s belly. “What if I could attach a video camera to that shark?” he thought, “follow it where no human could go, and see the ocean as the shark does?”