b'Although challenging, workingchallenging situation introduced me to a trade that quickly became a passion. I read old ma-for a major defense contractorchining books, studied the work of experi-can benefit a career. enced people and looked for opportunities to try new things.After several years of running Dads shop, By Christopher Tate life led me in another direction, and I arrived at an aerospace manufacturing company as a M achining has been the foundation ofmanufacturing engineer. That is when my re-my career since entering the workforceeducation in machining began.in 1993. I am fortunate to have had the op- At the family shop, we made things like portunity to work in several industries, andpump parts for dishwashers and seat parts I have had access to many different growthfor bass boats. The aerospace company that opportunities. I moved to made high-performance compo-Unlike many craftspeople, I did not get mynents for military aircraft like the F-16, A-10 education from a structured program, suchWarthog and Apache helicopter. The transi-as a vocational school or an apprenticeship. Ition from a small shop to a Department of De-learned my trade at the machine shop that myfense contractor was difficult.father owned. Unlike most shop owners, DadDishwasher parts are probably more com-was not a machinist. He was a salesman whoplex than one might think but not by much. found himself with a shop. A series of unfor- At the family shop, we usually worked with tunate events left us short-handed with a sig- dimensional tolerances in the 0.127 mm nificant backlog, forcing me to jump in. This(0.005") range with an occasional dip into the 42SEPTEMBER 2021 DefenseMaterials.indd 42 8/17/21 3:57 PM'