CNC for Prototypes and Fabrication

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.

Experienced tool and die maker Greg Deptula uses his PCNC 1100 on a daily basis. With a reputation for precision work, Deptula Precision specializes in short run precision aluminum parts. Greg hopes to expand his in Cherry Hill, New Jersey machine shop and credits his success to word-of-mouth referrals as well as a growing demand for CNC.

Learn how manufacturing Engineer Todd Wyant uses a PCNC 770 to prototype each iteration of the Alpha Hearing System, as well as low-volume production and creating jigs and fixtures for production and assembly. Todd is with Sohpono, Inc, a Biomedical device startup based out of Boulder, Colorado. Sohpono is using their PCNC 770 to help revolutionize the treatment of severe hearing loss.

Custom Pistolsmith Scott Mulkerin from SDM Fabricating was kind enough to spend a few minutes speaking about craftsmanship and "making things" with us in Episode 4 of our Tormach Owners Story video series.

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.

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.

While in high school, Scott Pobjoy took a part-time job at Cash Manufacturing Company, a custom machine shop and specialty manufacturer of supplies and accessories for firearms. High school ended and Pobjoy accepted a position as a full-time machinist in the shop. Purchasing the company from founder Ted D. Cash in 2006, Pobjoy has ramped up production. Cash Manufacturing now boasts a catalog of 100 parts and accessories.

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.

Ten years ago, when Fane Jones decided to retire from the excavating business he had run for more than two decades, he sold the trucks, dozers and equipment, but he kept the Saegertown, PA building he had stored them in. He hoped that one day he might have another business there.

“Prototypes and one-offs can tie up a company's resources. Every hour spent setting up that one or two pieces is an hour spent not running parts on which you make money,” says Brian Koerner. That's why he started TXI Technologies – to produce prototypes and one-offs so production companies and machine shops don't have to.

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?”