Makingchips | Equipping Manufacturing Leaders

Starting a machine shop doesn't always begin with a perfectly laid business plan, a polished facility, or years of hands-on experience. Sometimes it starts in a garage, with curiosity, YouTube videos, and a willingness to figure things out one mistake at a time. In this episode of MakingChips, we sit down with brothers James and Sean Cerven to talk about how they built their shop from the ground up during COVID. With backgrounds in mechanical engineering but almost no hands-on machining experience, they bought a small CNC, welded their own enclosure, and decided early on to take the business seriously, even when the operation itself was still small. Their story is a candid look at starting early and learning fast. The Cerven brothers share how financing machines, running jobs out of a garage, hiring quality before machinists, and investing in systems ahead of schedule helped them survive the most fragile years of the business. Along the way, we talk about learning through online communities, when advice helps