Making Chips Podcast for Manufacturing Leaders

You've picked the machine, signed the paperwork, and cleared a spot on the shop floor. Then come the questions. What about workholding? Tooling? High-pressure coolant? Will the bar feeder work with the control? Suddenly, that one big purchase has become a dozen more decisions—and the machine you bought to make money is still waiting to make its first part. Recorded live at IMTS 2026, Brendon DiVincenzo and I sit down with Mike Padilla of DN Solutions to talk about the gap between buying a machine and getting it into production. Through DN Solutions Verified Products, Mike works on the details that shop owners often discover after they've committed to the iron. We dig into compatibility, unexpected costs, automation, and who takes responsibility when all those pieces need to work together. And as software and AI become a bigger part of the shop floor, those questions get even more complicated. What should you expect from your next machine purchase—and how much of the integration should fall on you? What's Covered in this Episode (1:31) DN Solutions machine giveaway on the IMTS main stage (2:22) Mike Padilla's 25 years in workholding and his role at DN Solutions (3:33) What DNVP, DN Solutions Verified Products, covers (4:15) Stock machines that start making chips the day they hit the floor (5:51) Financing partners and rolling everything into one Section 179 package (8:05) Share keys and turnkeys beyond accessorization (9:42) Automation and the Hennig workflow cell built in about 12 months (11:11) Take your shop to the next level with DN Solutions (12:22) Where qualified peripherals originated (13:48) What a vendor has to go through to become verified (15:11) Whether a verified vendor list limits customer choice (19:06) How distributors get a standard quote for every machine configuration (21:52) Sales as a transfer of confidence (24:26) Ground Control's AI co-pilot for contract review (30:00) The litmus test for what belongs in DNVP, and why robots don't (33:12) The range of DN machines, from gang lathes to bridge mills (35:27) What the Heller acquisition adds to DN (37:31) Add AI chat to your website with Navu (38:46) DNVP as an ecosystem beyond the machine tool (41:51) How AI could reshape quoting, ERP, and the DNVP program (45:57) MTConnect, machine monitoring, and plug-and-play data (47:10) Why the next 24 months of change matter Resources Mentioned DN Solutions Ground Control Navu IMTS Connect with Mike Padilla and Mehul Shah DN Solutions Ground Control Connect with MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

You can hold tight tolerances, nail a complicated setup, and deliver beautiful parts—and still find yourself staring at a shrinking backlog. Most shop owners didn't get into manufacturing because they loved making cold calls. But being good at the work doesn't guarantee there will always be work to do. Gabe Draper learned that the hard way. After buying his family's machine shop, he ultimately had to close it, and he points to a lack of control over revenue as a major reason why. That experience led him to co-found Factur and help other manufacturers build a more intentional approach to bringing in business. In this episode, Mike and I sit down with Gabe to discuss two levers every shop owner needs to understand: increasing revenue and decreasing costs. We explore why your existing customers may hold more opportunity than you realize, how shops quietly lose ground even when purchase orders keep coming, and why buying more capacity deserves a clear plan for filling it. We also get into who should own sales, the difference between "hunting" for new customers and "farming" existing relationships, and how compensation plans can reward the wrong behavior. If sales keeps getting pushed aside until the backlog looks scary, this conversation will challenge you to treat it with the same discipline you bring to the shop floor. What's Covered in this Episode (1:29) Why most shop owners aren't naturally sales driven (2:32) What Factur does to help shops take control of revenue (4:19) The two levers: increase revenue or decrease costs (6:02) Machine buying after IMTS with no clear financial impact (7:34) The margin squeeze from carbide, coolant, labor, and price breaks (8:39) The post-COVID buying frenzy and the debt hangover (9:45) Stretched OEM payment terms and lost control of cash flow (12:00) Automate FAI and PO review with GroundControl (12:40) Fill the capacity you already own before buying machines (14:39) Step one: farm your existing customers (18:12) High-end machining and automation with DN Solutions (19:21) Why two of Mike's biggest customers didn't know half of what Hill does (22:01) Set growth goals and align incentives with the revenue you want (24:28) Forecast revenue by customer and plan for churn (27:20) Increase spindle uptime with Hennig Workflow (28:12) Who should sell: the owner can't abdicate it (30:05) Three phases: owner, one skilled seller, then hunters and farmers (32:09) Why hunting is the least precise part of the business (35:07) Runaway commission plans that reward coasting (36:18) Let your website answer buyer questions with Navu (37:30) Traditional reps vs. Factur's flat retainer model (40:35) What hunting costs and the shift past farming (43:37) A simple KPI: booked orders vs. shipped orders Resources Mentioned GroundControl DN Solutions Hennig Workflow Navu IMTS Connect with Gabe Draper of Factur Factur Connect on LinkedIn Connect with MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

The RFQs are coming in. Your machines have capacity. But the quotes are waiting on the same handful of people who are already busy keeping the shop running. Quoting takes experience, eats up valuable time, and comes with an especially frustrating reality: much of that effort goes into jobs you'll never win. And when a purchase order comes back immediately, your first thought might be, "What did we miss?" Recorded live at IMTS, we welcome CloudNC co-founder Theo Saville back to MakingChips, alongside Jason Bowes, to talk about this hidden bottleneck—and how AI could help relieve it. Building on CAM Assist, their AI tool for automating repetitive CAM programming tasks, CloudNC is expanding into quoting and estimating. Their approach starts with preparing the quote, surfacing risks, and generating an initial routing so an experienced person can review the work instead of building everything from scratch. With more than 1,000 shops now using CloudNC's technology, Theo and Jason share what they've learned since Theo's previous appearance, including lessons from running their own aerospace and defense shop. We discuss why quote turnaround matters, where chasing precision becomes counterproductive, and how estimates, programming decisions, and actual cycle times should inform one another. We also revisit Theo's original ambition: making CNC manufacturing as simple as submitting a part and pressing go. How close are we? What still needs to happen? And how do you earn the trust of experienced machinists who will be responsible for the results? With growing demand putting pressure on shops to deliver faster, this conversation explores where AI can help today—and what it will take to go further. What's Covered in this Episode (1:11) Buyers show up at IMTS with real shopping lists (1:54) Why metal parts take 10 weeks and what CloudNC set out to fix (3:38) CAM Assist, an AI that gets programming 70 to 80% of the way (4:53) Jason on sleeping on the shop floor and why a real shop matters (5:59) Why quoting is the natural next step after automated programming (6:50) Ground Control automates FAI generation and PO review (7:30) Why CloudNC built its own shop to shrink the problem (9:43) From beta to over a thousand customers, starting in the US (10:44) What the workflow looks like from RFQ to CAM to inspection (13:08) The owner as bottleneck and the E-Myth trap (16:38) Find Kennametal at IMTS and the Next Level Shop (17:28) Running a shop on the software: ones and twos, and first over the line (19:55) Don't over-engineer the quote, just win the work (21:57) What a day looks like with a quote agent, CAM Assist, and ERPs (24:51) Increase spindle uptime with Hennig Workflow (25:41) Estimated targets vs. actual part targets (28:55) Lightweight quoting vs. full toolpath calculation (30:05) Milling today, lathes on the roadmap (31:34) The goal: lift the ceiling from 20 machines to over 100 (32:51) Can't I just vibe code this? (37:15) Let your website answer buyer questions with Navu (38:28) Using AI to flag red flags on a print instead of quoting it (44:28) Where vibe coding does make sense Resources Mentioned Ground Control Kennametal Hennig Workflow Navu ProShop ERP IMTS Connect with Theo and Jason of CloudNC Connect with Theo on LinkedIn Connect with Jason on LinkedIn CloudNC Connect with MakingChips Website On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

We spend a lot of time asking where the next generation of machinists will come from. Ethan Crane was working in building supplies. A trip to a machine shop for a project turned into a receiving job, and a look around the shop turned into a new ambition: I want to do that. His first classroom was a little Harbor Freight bench lathe a coworker brought in. Ethan spent his lunch breaks making chips, then went home to study machining textbooks and watch videos. Nobody had to convince him that manufacturing was cool. He was already hooked. But even after he started making parts, he wondered whether he deserved to call himself a machinist. Did it count if he wasn't running a CNC? If his parts went into farm equipment instead of an airplane? That question stuck with me. Recorded live at IMTS, Jason and I chat with Ethan about manual machining, learning the trade, and what makes someone want to keep getting better. Surrounded by some of the most advanced equipment in manufacturing, we're talking with a guy who loves turning handles and feeling a tool cut metal—and has plenty to say about why that work still matters. We get into the decisions shops make every day: when a job belongs on a manual machine, when it's time to move it to CNC, and why an unexpected repair at the front door can be worth taking on. Ethan also shares what it means to make parts for the same kinds of farm equipment he grew up around, then see those parts become something that goes to work in a field. The conversation gets just as honest about our responsibilities as shop owners. We say we want people who are hungry to learn. What happens when they show up? Are we giving them consistent training, opportunities to progress, and a chance to understand why their work matters—or leaving them waiting for someone to have time? Ethan is still learning, and he's willing to let people see it. His videos show the work, his enthusiasm, and sometimes the part that took three attempts to get right. There's something in that for anyone trying to bring new people into this industry: what looks routine to an experienced machinist might be the very thing that makes someone else say, "I want to do that." What's Covered in this Episode (0:00) Jason Davis guest hosts, and it's the first IMTS for him and Ethan (1:15) Ethan's path from building supply to the machine shop (3:46) Why the best new machinists keep learning after clock-out (5:26) Move into high-level machining with DN Solution  (6:37) The first cut on a manual machine and why it hooks you (9:20) The first Bridgeport, machining history and what WWII industrialization took (11:37) How we decide what runs manual and what runs CNC (13:42) The integration between ProShop and GroundControl  (20:37) How shop owners can find and fuel the next generation (24:53) Always be hiring—don't wait until you need somebody (26:02) Let new machinists see the finished product (27:16) Increase spindle uptime with the Hennig WorkFlow automation system (28:07) Why we believe manual machines still have a purpose (32:13) Walk-in repair jobs that turn into customers (34:26) Seeing where your individual components end up is rewarding (35:02) You don't need to make aerospace parts to be a machinist (36:35) Social media advice: keep it simple and make it cool (41:15) Ethan's challenge at IMTS: find every manual machine Resources Mentioned DN Solutions Hennig Workflow IMTS Connect with Ethan Crane Ethan Crane on Instagram Ethan Crane on LinkedIn Connect with MakingChips Website On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

What do a freestyle motocross legend, a custom motorcycle painter, and a machine shop owner with 19 spindles have in common? A whole lot more than motorcycles. And at IMTS 2026, Kennametal brought all three together to prove it. Recorded live from the MakingChips studio at IMTS, we sit down with Carey Hart, the motocross icon who made history with a backflip on a dirt bike; Taylor Schultz, a custom painter whose work turns motorcycles into rolling artwork; and Satya Kraus, founder of Kraus Motor Co.  Together, they built a custom Indian motorcycle right on the show floor, complete with precision-machined components made using Kennametal tooling. It's part manufacturing demonstration, part art project, and one seriously cool giveaway. But the motorcycle is just the beginning. Satya shares how his obsession with building better bikes turned into a manufacturing business producing roughly 3,000 parts a week. Carey talks about finding his way from professional motocross into fabrication and custom bike building, while Taylor brings an artist's perspective to a world of CNC machines and automation. Their paths couldn't be more different, yet all three found their way into manufacturing because they loved creating something with their own hands. That leads to a bigger conversation about what the industry might be missing when it comes to attracting young talent. What happens when we show people the creativity behind machining instead of just the machines? Can automation actually make manufacturing careers more rewarding? And what can shop owners learn from people who have turned their passions into thriving businesses? From building a shop one spindle at a time to the importance of culture, collaboration, and keeping manufacturing in America, this conversation is a reminder that there's a lot more to making chips than making parts. Sometimes, it starts with wanting to build a really incredible motorcycle. Segments (0:30) Live from IMTS 2026: Meet the builders behind Kennametal's custom Indian motorcycle (2:14) From custom bikes to CNC machining: How Satya Kraus built his manufacturing business (4:39) Carey Hart's journey from freestyle motocross to custom motorcycle building (6:31) Taylor Schultz's path from body shops and art school to custom painting (8:28) Learn how to build a next-level shop with DN Solutions  (9:40) Machining real motorcycle components with Kennametal tooling (12:31) The challenge of keeping consumer product manufacturing in America (15:24) First impressions of IMTS and the artistry behind precision machining (18:00) Why you need to check out the Hennig WorkFlow Automation System (18:51) Attracting the next generation through creativity, hands-on work, and shop classes (25:51) From craftsman to business owner: Learning to build systems instead of just parts (28:15) Robotics, AI, and the growing value of handmade craftsmanship (31:32) How Navu can help you answer your buyer's questions  (32:45) Growing from one Haas to 19 spindles: Lessons in patience, technology, and investment (37:21) Why people, culture, and collaboration matter as much as machines (39:15) Building businesses around passion and the people who share it (40:24) The finished Indian motorcycle and the Kennametal IMTS giveaway Resources Mentioned Kennametal Kennametal's IMTS 2026 Motorcycle Build Kraus Motor Co. Hart Luck Parts & Gear Schultz Designz Indian Motorcycle Tiger Manufacturing A.R.E. Manufacturing How to Connect with Satya, Carey, and Taylor Satya Kraus's website: https://krausmotorco.com Satya's Instagram Carey Hart's Website: https://www.hartluck.com Instagram Taylor Schultz's website: https://www.schultzdesignz.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schultzdesignz/