From Dirt Track to Job Shop: How a 23-Year-Old Sprint Car Racer Built a Woman-Owned Fab Business
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
Release Date: 07/15/2026
What 'Green Steel' Really Means: The Hidden Economics of Tariffs, Carbon, and the Data Center Boom, Ep 68
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
I sat down this week with Randy Charles, a metallurgist who's spent his whole career watching the steel industry reinvent itself, and he's not done yet. Randy graduated as a metallurgist from the University of Pittsburgh and started out at a plate mill at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point. From there he jumped to Nucor's Crawfordsville plant right as the industry was arguing over whether compact strip production, a brand new way to make flat rolled steel, would ever actually work. He was living proof that it did. He went on to help start up one of the first Steckel mills in the South down in...
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The Culture Playbook for Keeping Good People, Ep. #67
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
I'm filling in for Brendon this week, and I decided to dig into the topic I probably know better than anyone on this team: shop culture. Not the stuff that shows up on a quote or a spec sheet, but the stuff that decides whether your best people stick around and whether your shop floor actually runs without you standing over it. Joining me is Jason Davis, CEO of D&D Enterprises, a CNC machine shop that just turned 50 years old and is now three generations deep. His team runs 50 people through aerospace, firearms, defense, marine, and industrial work, and he's also a co-host of our sister...
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The Content Marketing Mistakes Costing Manufacturers RFQs, Ep #66
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
This week I sat down with Brooke Laing, who's just joined the MakingChips team full time as our new Content and Community Developer. You're going to be hearing a lot more from her. Brooke didn't come up through marketing school. She spent five years boots on the ground, working as a fitter and welder on job sites, before she ever touched a content calendar. She built a following doing something nobody else in the trades was doing: showing what the job actually looks like, day to day. One 15-second clip she posted on a break, without thinking twice about it, ended up with 600,000 views by the...
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From Healthcare to Welding: One Woman's Path Into the Trades, Ep #65
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
This week I sat down with Nico McTague, a soon-to-be welder up in Toronto who's about to finish an eight-month intensive program and walk straight into her first welding job. What makes her story worth your time isn't just where she's headed, it's where she came from. Nico spent years in healthcare caring for people with special needs, a career she loved until burnout, and the addiction that came with trying to cope with it, forced a hard reset. A family friend offered to get her into a steel mill. She walked in expecting to hate it. Instead she fell in love with the noise, the heat, the...
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From Dirt Track to Job Shop: How a 23-Year-Old Sprint Car Racer Built a Woman-Owned Fab Business
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
In this episode, I sit down with Emme Hughes, the 23-year-old owner of EH Metalworks in Enid, Oklahoma. She runs a woman-owned custom job shop that does laser cutting, plasma cutting, tube bending, and fabrication in aluminum and stainless. What struck me is that she has been around metal fabrication her entire life. Her Paw Paw taught her to TIG weld when she was six years old, and by 18 she was running her own plasma table and hiring her first employees. Emme's story starts in her Paw Paw's shop. He spent more than 50 years in fabrication, ran an ASME code shop, and did work for...
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He Built a Fiber Laser in His Garage. What does that Means for Fabrication? #63
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
In this episode, I sit down with Travis Mitchell, a full-time creator who has built a flat-sheet fiber laser, tube laser, metal 3D printer, CNC equipment, and more from his garage. Travis did not come from a machine-building background. He started in graphic design, got hooked on 3D printing, and followed that curiosity all the way into building machines most people would assume require an OEM, a factory, and a much larger budget. We dig into what it actually takes to design a DIY fiber laser: starting with the controller, finding compatible components, decoding manuals, studying commercial...
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Should You Really Buy That Laser? The Hidden Math Behind Modern Fabrication, #62
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
Fiber lasers have completely changed what's possible in metal fabrication, but here's the part nobody puts on the brochure: speed alone doesn't make a shop profitable. In this episode I'm joined by Mike Peterson, owner of Critical Laser and Spire Ranges, for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to run a successful laser cutting and sheet metal business in 2026. Mike's story goes all the way back to 1992, when Critical Laser brought one of the first lasers into Utah, a 1,600-watt Mitsubishi CO2 machine that felt more like magic than manufacturing. Since then he's watched the...
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From Curiosity to Career: How SparkShop is Building the Next Generation of Makers, Episode #61
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
What if the biggest challenge in manufacturing isn’t technology, but timing? In this episode of MakingSparks, host Brendon DiVincenzo sits down with Shonali Ditz, co-founder and executive director of SparkShop, to explore a powerful idea: we’re trying to solve a talent pipeline problem far too late. Shonali’s journey from engineering student to nonprofit founder started with a realization that many in the industry share—there simply aren’t enough people entering manufacturing and engineering. But instead of focusing on recruiting at the college or job level, she and her team...
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Passing the Torch: The Next Chapter of MakingSparks, Ep #60
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
Change in manufacturing rarely comes quietly—and neither does progress. In this special episode of MakingSparks, longtime hosts Matthew Nix and Casey Velker take a moment to reflect, rewind, and ultimately pass the mic to the next voice of the show: Brendon DiVicenzo. It’s not an ending—it’s a handoff mid-stride. Matthew and Casey revisit the origin story of MakingSparks, from a short-run idea built around 100x growth to a full-fledged podcast embedded in the MakingChips ecosystem. Along the way, they’ve built something bigger than episodes—a platform for honest...
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The Hard Truth About Pricing Your Work
Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders
In this episode, hosts Matthew and Casey sit down with Codie Aljets, owner and artist behind Sage Country Customs, to talk about the realities of building a business around custom metal art. Codie shares how he turned his passion for high-detail metal artwork into a full-time career, the lessons he’s learned about pricing creative work, and why relationships, storytelling, and value matter just as much as the craftsmanship itself. From navigating the business side of being an artist to building meaningful pieces that clients will treasure for generations, this conversation dives deep into...
info_outlineIn this episode, I sit down with Emme Hughes, the 23-year-old owner of EH Metalworks in Enid, Oklahoma. She runs a woman-owned custom job shop that does laser cutting, plasma cutting, tube bending, and fabrication in aluminum and stainless. What struck me is that she has been around metal fabrication her entire life. Her Paw Paw taught her to TIG weld when she was six years old, and by 18 she was running her own plasma table and hiring her first employees.
Emme's story starts in her Paw Paw's shop. He spent more than 50 years in fabrication, ran an ASME code shop, and did work for refineries and grain companies across Oklahoma. She grew up welding beside him, racing sprint cars on the dirt track behind the shop, and soaking up everything he knew. When she got out of high school, she taught herself to run the plasma table, posted her work on Facebook, and watched the orders take off fast enough that she had to start hiring people at 19.
Now she's working to grow out of the small business boot camp phase, where you take whatever comes in the door, and into steady, repeatable manufacturing. That's why she chased her Oklahoma DOT certification and is finishing a federal woman-owned certification. Her thinking is sharp for any shop owner to hear: chase the work people need, not just the work people want. The custom signs and railings make great social posts, but the mandatory, unglamorous jobs are what pay the bills.
We also get into the harder parts of building a business young, from learning to lead men twice her age at 18 to setting boundaries between friendship and work. And we talk about the bittersweet thread running through all of it, the mentor who made it possible. Emme lost her Paw Paw about a year ago, and he was coaching her from the shop right up to the end.
If you're running a job shop, or thinking about starting one, there's a lot here to take away: how to build durable demand, how to grow into leadership, and why Emme's real goal isn't size for its own sake. As she puts it, she wants to build something big, not for her, but for the people she can employ.
What's Covered in this Episode
- (0:57) Introducing Emme Hughes of EH Metalworks in Enid, Oklahoma
- (2:36) Emme on running a woman-owned custom job shop: laser, plasma, mandrel tube bending, aluminum and stainless
- (5:48) Chasing needs over wants, and why she pursued Oklahoma DOT certification for steady work
- (6:50) Building the business on the unglamorous, mandatory jobs, not just the custom pieces
- (7:32) How she got here: her Paw Paw's 50-year fabrication career and ASME code shop
- (8:52) Learning to TIG weld at six (and the trust that made it possible)
- (13:12) Take your shop to the next level with ProShop ERP and invest in yourself first
- (14:48) Diving into her work on micro sprint cars and the dirt track
- (19:18) Her first hires at 18 and 19 when the Facebook orders blew up
- (21:19) Learning to lead and the hard line between friendship and business
- (25:32) Her Paw Paw’s integral role in her life and business
- (28:56) Burned by recruiters who don't get manufacturing? Meet Hire MFG Leaders
- (29:25) Turning the corner: a USDA grant, mentor Jodi Harris, and her first laser
- (31:03) How big does she want to go? Not for her, but for the people
- (33:23) A head-scratcher job: resizing gas-plant rings and water-jetting silicone gaskets
- (35:58) The print governs all: do the job and skip the second-guessing
- (36:48) Invest in your leadership at Elevate during IMTS 2026, powered by AMT and Women in Manufacturing
- (37:40) Meeting her fiance and sparking a local powder coating business
- (40:12) Why it all comes back to people and relationships
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Emme Hughes
- EH Metalworks
- Connect with Emme on LinkedIn