Texas is a hotbed for high tech manufacturing companies, especially machine shops. Colter Crossley, who owns and operates Blackstone Solutions and Technologies, prides himself on being a successful small business in the heart of a highly competitive market.

Charlie Brumfield was an old-school Dungeons and Dragons player looking for a gift for some of his gaming buddies when he decided to start up Artisan Dice. “Within 48 hours I found myself in the dice-making business,” Brumfield says. “Our first day in business I built a website, put it up Sunday night, and by 6:00 AM Monday morning we had $1700 in sales. It’s been rockin’ and rollin’ ever since.”

When you go to a concert or attend a major event, the fanfare and spectacle of the event are what captures your attention, but there is an array of event production going on in the background to make everything happen.

Steven Anschutz at Entertainment Fabrication uses his PCNC 1100 to excel in the niche industry of event and staging production by creating various specialized parts to make industry-standard components work with each other, as well as not-so-standard components.

Daniel Hienzsch is the resident engineer at Supplyframe’s design lab in Pasadena, CA, where they use their PCNC 1100 for a broad array of engineering endeavors.

Tormach machine tools are used for a variety of different projects, from businesses to hobbyist endeavors, but in 2016 Tormach-created parts saw a lot of action in the BattleBots arena.

Razor USA, the company best known for introducing the world to the Razor Scooter back in 2000, uses a Tormach PCNC 1100 for prototyping and product development. Billy Griggs, a retired BMX racer and product developer at Razor, says “Since [the success of the scooters], it’s been a long journey into electrics, electric ride-ons, and fantasy-type toys. We’ve really grown as a company well beyond the scooters.”