Many Tormach customers know John Saunders, in fact there are many that know Tormach because of John Saunders and his YouTube channel, NYC CNC.  Saunders started his path to CNC machining by sleeping next to his mill in a one-bedroom apartment in New York. He began machining parts for others for fun, when his eyes turned to Tormach. “It’s all I wanted,” he explains. “This thing, the PCNC 1100, was a monster machine for me.”

Jim Anderson has been a journeyman machinist in Canada for more than 26 years, and he’s built everything from racing motorcycles to hydrogen fuel cells. Parts big and tiny, Anderson has seen a lot as a fabricator. With his array of building knowledge and his two PCNC 1100s, Anderson runs a prototype development machine shop, Anderson Prototypes.

The Tormach mission is focused on enabling the ideas of our many users, who find themselves at varying levels of knowledge and skill when it comes to machining. CNC machining has often been restricted to those with the means to house massive manufacturing machinery and those with the knowledge-base to keep from crashing said machinery.

Scientists don’t fully understand how superconducting materials work, but if we did, their potential could be harnessed in saving energy. Peter Abbamonte, chief scientific officer at Inprentus (Champaign, IL), explains that, “30% of the power consumed in the United States every year just goes to heat up the grid.”

Prototyping can be a challenge. We live in an era of fast-moving start-ups and Kickstarter revolutions, which leads to specialized machining and short turn-arounds. Chris Rauch keeps his “dual aspect engineering company” running steadily, thanks to both a lathe and mill from Tormach.

Luke Colby is a veteran of the space industry – he has both a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering, he founded the BU Rocket Team at Boston University, worked in the combustion lab as a Master’s student at Georgia Tech, previously worked for Scaled Composites (an aerospace company owned by Northrop Grumman), and now he’s the president and CEO of Triton Space Technologies.