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For Mason Montalvo at , the point of starting a machine shop on his own was not the prospect of profit, but the chance to commit himself to manufacturing challenges in his own way. “I think if I was in it for the money, I wouldn’t have kept doing this,” he says. “But I’m not in it for the money; I’m in it for the challenge.”

Montalvo started his own machine shop in Statham, Georgia, after working for years as a machinist and welder at local businesses. Now , he designs and builds custom parts using a manual Vectrax knee mill and LeBlond lathe. In addition to milling and turning, Montalvo Machine is capable of metal fabrication for both structural and non-structural parts. He designs both parts and fixtures using Autodesk’s Fusion CAD software in an office he shares with his wife above the shop.

Check out his shop in our video:

Transcript

Mason Montalvo (Owner, Montalvo Machine): A lot of times it doesn't feel like it's getting me anywhere, you know. But I think if I was in it for the money, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have kept doing this, you know. But I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it for the challenge. 

Eli Plaskett (Senior Associate Editor, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Montalvo machine is a one man shop located in Statham, Georgia, was founded by Mason Montalvo, who designed the facility from top to bottom to meet his needs.  

Montalvo: You know, I think that would be my piece of advice is, if, if you want to do something, don't do it for the money. The money won't be there unless you love what you're doing. You know, 

Plaskett: The shop focuses on machining and fabrication, producing all parts with a combination of welding and traditional machining and turning. The shop began making hand rails for commercial and residential construction, hen moved into metal fabrication, repair and prototyping. Running a one man shop, Montalvo has to be a skilled designer, programmer, engineer, machinist and welder. Let's see how he does it. 

Montalvo: First job I ever had was working at Chick fil A, you know. And, and I, I learned kind of how to hustle there. I went to work for a much larger company that's local here. And, they're a big industrial fabrication company. That was one of that's my, my favorite place I ever worked. I love the folks out there, but I just wanted to start my own thing, you know? And it was, it was time to do that.

And I ran on out of there and started doing this. Kind of jumped off cliff, to be honest, you know? 

Plaskett: You landed! 

Montalvo: I'm trying to!

Plaskett: For the benefit of camera, can you tell us the story of this rest again?

Montalvo: Absolutely! 2021 is when I actually got the LLC, you know, within a year or so. After getting the lathe, I realized I needed a steady rest. And I reached out to LeBlond, and I realized how much a steady rest would cost me new.

You kind of have three options with steady rest. You can buy one new from the company if whoever still makes parts for the lathes, which LeBlond fortunately does. You can get one from the junkyard and modify it. Or you can make one, you know?

And you really they tell you, you know, it doesn't need to be that great. It's just got to do the job. But I'm a little bit of a crazy person, and so I decided that I was gonna make one, and I was gonna make it right. And so I ended up spending about as much in time as I would have spent on buying a steady rest from Leblond, and I understood quickly why they cost so much. But I designed all this in Fusion, and I did my best.

And this is something I deal with a lot with machining. I've got to build the stuff. So I did my best to design everything so that it kind of fits together like Legos. I obviously had these plasma cut out, and then I machined them afterward, and I machined in these pins. These spacer pins were all to about a 0.002- or 0.003-inch tolerance into these holes so that everything's sandwiched together, and then I just plug welded all that together. These here — if I can remember how I put them in — there, I drilled. I ended up counter-boring holes into these pieces of square bar, so that when I put it all together I could actually stick a pin in there, line it up, tack it in place, and then pull the pin out and plug-weld the hole back up.

And I did my best. Like I said, I did it in Fusion. I modeled the lathe, I modeled the ways and all of the geometry of the ways that was pertinent. I modeled the carriage so that I know where the carriage was going to hit under all the parts of this. And I modeled down to the the actual swing to make sure that it — when it laid back — it would sit back at just the right angle, so that it wouldn't just fall back onto my parts while I was trying to work.

You know, I wanted to stay open. Screws and bearings is the only things that I purchased. Everything else, I made in the shop on these two machines here. So that's why I started my own business, because nobody lets you go overboard when you work for somebody else. So I work for myself, and I can go overboard all I want.

So I did Inventor when I was in high school a lot, and I got fairly proficient with that just playing with it. But yeah, Inventor wouldn't work with Max. So I switched over to Fusion, not really knowing what it was, and it was more or less the same. But it was different enough, it took me a little bit of a learning curve, and that was before I ever started my own company. I was just toying with it. And then when I, when I started doing this and started upgrading... I use it in a lot of places where other people wouldn't use it.

Building handrails, or almost everything I do, I just model it up in Fusion and use that as my base measurements. And it tends to eliminate a lot of the hassle.

So this is a Vectrax mill that I bought at an auction about two, three years ago, and it it came with pretty much almost everything you see on here. One of the big keys that I wanted was having a Z drive and a Y Drive. Typically, when you buy Bridgeport mills that have drive motors on them, they only drive the X axis. You have to do the Y axis by yourself. And for anybody that's ever done a lot of manual work, you got to crank this stupid handle right here about 400 times. You know, each full turn is only 100 thousandths of rise, so if you got a lot of parts, you really wear your arm out.

Plaskett: On all three: X, Y and Z? 

Montalvo: X, Y and Z. I've got DRO on the X and the Y, not on the Z. But one of the nicest things, in addition to my drives, is it came with a pneumatic tool changer, so I can change my tools with this, and I don't have to get the wrench on top, like you used to have to do, and that's what I grew up doing, you know? So what one of the biggest things is I can change my tools out pretty quick if I need to, if I need to drop the table down. I'm not sitting here doing that.

This is the best machine I ever could have got. The ways are almost perfect. There's no wear in the ways. There's a little bit of, little bit of damage to them. It came with the ring light, and I added me a little spray mister to it, you know, and a few tool fixturing things on the back.

You know, I can do a lot of work right here without having to move, and I don't have to do a lot of math. Most of the time, if I'm working in the middle, I can kind of just set it and forget it for at least one pass.

This little dial here, it's a one thousandths graduation, 100 thousandths dial. And you can dial in pretty close. If you're not taking big heavy cuts, because it’s not a big heavy machine, you can dial in within about a thou or a half-thou, comfortably.

Plaskett: What kind of parts have you made on this so far?

Montalvo: One of the my favorite parts, I made back in November. This part here, and I can get some pictures of it later on. It is a motor mount, and it goes up against a stainless steel tank and drives a shaft that goes through the middle of the stainless steel tank on the motor mounts to this side. And this is the tank side. There's actually a brass bushing that got pressed into this with a pretty tight fit, and then a little there was a Teflon seal so the shaft, they would fill the tank up with acetone.

And they needed to be able to spin something in the tank without the acetone spilling out of the tank. So this was not my design. This was a design given to me, but for a manual shop it poses a good number of challenges for me. Both sides have separate features that are on the same center line, so that the the two bores are on the same center line. But they're offset from the center of the part. This whole pattern here was on the center line of the part, but these two holes and these three hole and this three hole pattern here were offset off of the center line of the part.

So what I ended up doing was I just made a little base plate out of the same material. It was an off cut from the material I bought, and I made that piece to mount up to the four-hole pattern there, so I stuck it in the middle. And I drilled these four holes and bored this hole to the proper depth. Then I mounted this to the back side of that and took and indicated off of these sides here to ensure that this was actually square to those holes as they were machined. And it worked perfectly. It didn't have to be within a couple thousandths or anything, but I got it within a couple thousandths.

Plaskett: Solid work.

Montalvo: Thank you.

Plaskett: Well, solid work on Fusion.

Montalvo: Yeah, exactly.

Plaskett: Let’s take a look at your office,

Montalvo: Absolutely. 

One of the things I didn't realize was that the zoning laws — I didn't care at the time — zoning laws don't allow me to have employees at the shop, right? Which is great, because I work by myself. But when I decide to hire somebody, like if I need to move shops, yeah? And I need to hire somebody to run the shop while I'm out, I can't do it. It’s like Catch 22, you know? So we'll figure that out one of these days.

But that first question, what motivates that? I thought about that quite a bit. The challenge is, is really, what motivates me, you know? I think about all the time. Like, man, you know, if this gets big, I could end up having a lot of money, but that doesn't matter. If it was easy, everybody would do it.

And I think that's also the biggest piece of advice, you know? This is hard. I've gone through, and continue to go through, a lot of heartache and stuff like that, just because this takes up a lot of my time. And a lot of times it doesn't feel like it's getting me anywhere, you know? But I think if I was in it for the money, I wouldn't have kept doing this, you know? But I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it for the challenge. So, I think that would be my piece of advice: If you want to do something, don't do it for the money because the money won't be there unless you love what you're doing. If you don't really love it, just go get a job doing it. But if you really love it, then pick it up on your own. But you’ve got to understand that it's a dedication. It takes up every minute of my life. Luckily, I'm here at home so I can spend a lot of time with my kids, too. But it's definitely harder than the money would justify.

Brent Donaldson (Editor-in-Chief, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Hey everybody, Brent Donaldson with 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ here, and if you just watched that video and you're thinking, “Boy, I'd like my shop to be featured in the View From My Shop series,” then just send us an email at shopvideo@mmsonline.com, and tell us what sets your shop apart.