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The Culture Playbook for Keeping Good People, Ep. #67

Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders

Release Date: 08/26/2026

Run Your Shop Like You're Selling It: How One Owner United Welding and Machining Under One Quality System | Ep. 69

Making Sparks Podcast for Fabrication Leaders

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Payne, owner of Hill Manufacturing and a familiar voice across the MakingChips Network, where he co-hosts MakingChips and hosts By the Numbers. Mike spent his early career in private equity and investment banking before buying Hill, and he's bought five more shops since. What I didn't realize until we talked is that Hill was a welding and fabrication business first, with machining built around it. That's where the story gets good. During due diligence, the previous owner told Mike that if she were sticking around, she'd get rid of the machine shop and go...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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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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 show, The Manufacturing Blueprint.

We get into why Jason hires for culture and character before he ever looks at a resume, what actually happens in an employee's first few months that decides whether they stay, and why the size of a mistake matters less than whether someone owns it. We also talk about the gap between generations on the shop floor, and how leaders earn trust instead of demanding it.

If you've ever felt like your shop survives on a couple of heroes instead of a system, this one's for you. I bring some of my own perspective into it too, from coaching youth volleyball to being one of the few women on a shop floor, because it turns out the lessons translate a lot more directly than you'd think.

What's Covered in this Episode

(0:00) Filling in for Brendon, I dig into shop culture with Jason Davis, CEO of D&D Enterprises and co-host of The Manufacturing Blueprint
(2:13) Inside D&D: 50 years in business, three generations deep, and 50 people running aerospace, firearms, defense, marine, and industrial work
(3:07) Why Jason hires for culture and character first, and will wait months for the right fit instead of filling a seat
(4:47) Skipping formal apprenticeships in favor of a hyper-selective, relationship-driven hiring process
(8:14) Win a fully tooled DN Solutions SDM4100 CNC machine, plus an IMTS scavenger hunt for extra entries
(9:14) What actually happens in an employee's first few months that decides whether they stay
(10:11) The real cost of a mistake, and why taking ownership matters more than the dollar amount
(12:16) My volleyball coaching rule: I'll always take coachable over talented
(12:51) Earning respect across generations instead of demanding it
(12:51) The 40-to-130-parts story: coaching a young operator instead of just correcting him
(16:07) Take your shop to the next level with DN Solutions
(18:42) Why humility beats experience, and how D&D gets tribal knowledge out of people's heads with ProShop
(18:42) The instant-gratification problem, and why shrinking attention spans are making shop training harder
(23:51) Why being alone with your own thoughts makes you a stronger leader
(25:44) Breaking through the “how was your weekend” small talk to actually get real with people
(26:45) Why I refuse to be a complainer, and how being open about my own struggles gives other people permission to be honest too
(31:16) Losing a major customer to China overnight, and staying steady as a leader when the business takes a hit
(31:16) Why you need to join us at IMTS, September 14-19 in Chicago
(31:16) What Jason had to unlearn as a young, hands-off leader, and why he still resets on the production floor himself
(38:42) My own leadership path, from running a gym team at 19 to starting over at the bottom in the union
(39:32) What it's like earning respect as a woman in a male-dominated shop
(39:57) Knowing when to hold your ground and when to let it go, plus the father-in-law wisdom that ties it all together

What's Covered in this Episode

Resources Mentioned

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