Making Chips Podcast for Manufacturing Leaders

At the Boring Bar: AI, Automation, and the Machine Shop We'd Build Today | Ep. 538

A lot has changed since the last time we pulled up chairs around the Boring Bar. For our fourth edition, eight manufacturing leaders joined us in the MakingChips studio a

Why Your Shop's Website Traffic Is Down, But Your Leads Aren't | Ep. 537

Website traffic is falling across the board, and it's tempting to read that as a marketing problem. It usually isn't. AI summaries now answer the generic top of funnel qu

GroundControl: Turning First Articles From a Bottleneck Into an Advantage | Ep. 536

Six jobs waiting on a first article means six spindles sitting still. That is the math Mike lives with at Hill, running around 58 jobs a day where nearly every one needs

Lean, AI, and One-Piece Flow: How Henry Holsters Ships Same-Day | Ep. 535

Most shops treat lean like a poster on the break room wall. Andrew Henry runs it like a competitive weapon. He built Henry Holsters into a company that ships around 55,00

Craftsman With Character: How to Mentor the Next Generation of Machinists | Ep. 534

Every shop owner knows the workforce problem by heart. The trades got denigrated, tech ed programs got gutted, and a whole generation of kids never found out that a manuf

IMTS 2026 Preview: What's New, How to Plan It, and Why It's Worth the Trip | Ep. 533

IMTS is 1.2 million square feet spread across six days, and the average visitor only spends about 2.7 of them on the floor. That math is exactly why walking in without a

How a 19-Year-Old Built a Tight-Tolerance Machine Shop, Ep #532

Most machine shop owners spend twenty years learning the lesson Stone figured out before he turned 21: get great at one thing, and say no to almost everything else. He bo

Win a Machine, Grow Your Team: One Shop Owner's Playbook for Smart Growth, Ep #531

Most shop owners have stood in front of a shiny new machine and felt the pull. Buy it, and the work will come. Tim Drinkwater of Accurate Machine Products has lived both

The AI Everyone Will Actually Care About at IMTS 2026, Ep #530

AI is going to be everywhere at IMTS this September, and if you walk the floor without a filter, it'll make your head spin. So we brought in someone whose whole job is he

Why Starting a Machine Shop Felt Less Risky Than Another Corporate Job, Ep #529

Getting laid off twice early in your career could make you crave stability. It did the opposite for Brian Balthasar. After two rounds of corporate layoffs, he decided tha

The Fast Eat the Slow: A Strategy Playbook for the Future of Your Machine Shop, 528

Most machine shops judge a good day by spindle time. If the machines are cutting, we're making money. If they're sitting still, something must be wrong. But what if kee

Stop Complaining About the Skills Gap and Do This Instead, Ep #527

Everybody in manufacturing knows the skills gap is real. Far fewer people are doing anything about it. That tension runs through this entire conversation, and it's why we

Two Brothers, One Tormach, and the Mission to Bring Honor Back to American Manufacturing, #526

Keith and Patrick Lee didn't start their machine shop with a giant facility, a full team, or a fleet of high-end equipment. They started with a Tormach in a one-car garag

Built on Saying Yes: Inside a One-Man Machine Shop, 525

Some shop owners are born into machining. Others stumble into it through YouTube, side jobs, and a little bit of "sure, I think we can fit that D11 dozer cylinder on the

From Classroom to Career: The Talent Pipeline Manufacturing Needs, 524

In manufacturing, everyone talks about the skills gap. Fewer people talk about the relationships, systems, and long-term commitment it takes to solve it. In this episode

SendCutSend and the Future of Manufacturing: Speed, Scale, and Specialization, 523

Recorded live from the Toolpath Machining Summit at Mammoth Mountain, this episode of MakingChips explores what happens when software thinking collides with modern manufa

How Melissa Ramos Leveraged Social Media to Create a Manufacturing Movement, 522

What happens when a young woman with zero machining experience gets handed the keys to two CNC mills and told, "Figure it out"? For Melissa Ramos, it became the start of

Printing the Future: How One Shop Is Winning with Additive + Machining, 521

What if the future of your machine shop isn't just faster spindles or more automation—but an entirely different way of making parts? In this episode of MakingChips: Gen

Supply Chain Reality Check: Risk, Resilience, and What's Next, 520

What happens when global policy decisions collide with the realities of the shop floor?  In this episode of MakingChips, the team sits down with Brennan Grignon, founde

From Accidental Machinist to Automation Advocate: Why the Future Belongs to the Bold, 519

Sometimes the path into manufacturing isn't a straight line but more like a ricochet. That's exactly how Mark Christopher's journey began. From nearly flunking out of col