531. Win a Machine, Grow Your Team: One Shop Owner’s Playbook for Smart Growth

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Most shop owners have stood in front of a shiny new machine and felt the pull. Buy it, and the work will come. Tim Drinkwater of Accurate Machine Products has lived both sides of that bet, the one that nearly buried him and the one that showed up as a free machining center.

This conversation sits right where two of our current series meet: Gen CNC, where we talk to founders who started young, and our workforce development series. Tim started his shop in a garage in 2007, and he’s blunt about how a young founder should spend those first dollars. Cash is worth more than tools you don’t need. Customers come before capability. And sometimes buying an existing shop beats building one from scratch.

We also get into the mistake that can quietly kill a shop. Tim bought a brand new lathe for a firearms customer who never signed a contract and then walked away. Mike shares the flip side he keeps running into, walking through shops with gorgeous, idle equipment bought on a customer’s promise that never turned into a purchase order. One of those build-outs is the reason a whole company ended up for sale.

Then there’s the fun part. Tim won a DN Solutions SVM 4100 in the DN and Kennametal giveaway, put it to work on challenging tool steel parts, and liked it enough to go buy a second one. There’s another machine giveaway coming at IMTS this year, and you can get in on it at makingchips.com/giveaway.

The back half is all about people. When applicants dried up, Tim went straight to the high schools, joined the Craftsman with Character program, and stopped using the word machinist because most students have no idea what it means. It’s the same thing we keep coming back to on this show. The parts matter, but the people are what carry a shop into the next generation.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:00) A machine giveaway teaser, and why Tim’s story matters
• (1:31) Starting Accurate Machine Products in a garage in 2007
• (3:22) What the shop makes, from jet ski parts to finish packaging
• (4:43) Advice for young founders: cash beats tools you don’t need
• (8:00) eBay machines and the leap to the first brand new machine
• (9:16) A new lathe, a firearms customer, and no contract to back it up
• (11:31) Beautiful equipment gathering dust: the shop that went up for sale
• (13:51) Take your shop high-end with DN Solutions
• (15:02) Winning a DN Solutions SVM 4100 in the DN and Kennametal giveaway
• (16:45) Turning the win into S7 tool steel work and a 4+1 upgrade
• (17:57) Buying a second SVM 4100 and standardizing on one control
• (20:21) Dial in your workholding with SMW Autoblok
• (21:10) DN service put to the test: the contactor gremlin
• (23:18) From zero applicants to working with the youngest generation
• (24:56) Youth apprenticeships and rebranding machinist to precision metal cutting
• (28:38) Rhett’s story: four years, his own key, and a CMMC future
• (30:38) The industry needs accountants and coders, not just machinists
• (33:53) Invest in your leadership at Elevate during IMTS 2026
• (34:45) Getting your crew and local students to IMTS
• (40:39) MakingChips at IMTS 2026: find us in the AME/Hennig booth

Resources Mentioned

• DN Solutions
• Kennametal
• SMW Autoblok
• Dave Hataj with Craftsman with Character
• Elevate powered by AMT (IMTS 2026)
• IMTS
• MakingChips Machine Giveaway

Connect with Tim Drinkwater

• Accurate Machine Products
• Tim Drinkwater on LinkedIn
• Tim@ampcnc.com

Connect with MakingChips

• www.MakingChips.com
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• On LinkedIn
• On Instagram
• On Twitter
• On YouTube