How I Made It: Clint Smith

My high school didn't have a machining program. My first introduction to hands-on learning was automotive classes. That proved to me you can make a living with your hands.

When high school ended, I didn't want to do automotive repair. I started looking at other careers and some family members and neighbors asked me, “Have you ever heard of machining?” I had never heard of it. So, I started looking into programs.

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 I'm lucky because I live in the same state as one of the best training programs for machinists at Vincennes University. I signed up for their machining program and got my associate's degree.

Mastercam senior education market specialist Clint Smith. Image provided by Mastercam.

College was my introduction into machining. A lot of my classmates had been taking machining classes since they were freshman in high school. I started a little bit behind, but I quickly caught on.

I took a role as a Mastercam programmer. It was a huge learning experience, taking what I had learned in college and then trying to apply that to the real world.

During the housing crisis, the company I worked for suffered. I had to reinvent myself. I moved away from machining and picked up new skills as a service engineer.

I wanted my work to be people-centric. I thought teaching was a great opportunity for me to work with people of all ages who were looking to reinvent themselves and find new careers. That's how I jumped into education.

I see students who have gone on to graduate, get jobs, get promotions, set up machines and program on their own, and then evolve their lives and buy houses and have families. To be even the tiniest, smallest piece of their story is a big victory for me.

I work exclusively on Mastercam's educational business. I get to work with some of the best educators all over the world. We have over 170,000 installations of Mastercam in educational institutions around the world.

It's important for students to get their first look at Mastercam in their education because Mastercam is so widely used. If you're training them on the same software they're going to use in their careers, it gives them a leg up.

We also work with partners like WorldSkills, SkillsUSA, EuroSkills, Project MFG, America's Cutting Edge — workforce development organizations that are helping close the skills gap.

When I first started at Mastercam, SkillsUSA was still running their CNC competitions with manual coding. I was asked to join their technical committee as they wanted to implement CAD/CAM software to make their competition as industry-relevant as possible. We've worked really hard to bring that competition to a new level.

Students are becoming more and more proficient at CAD/CAM. SkillsUSA even has a five-axis machine competition.

If anyone could come to a skills event, whether it's a local event or a big-time event like WorldSkills, I think it would be impossible to leave and not be impressed by young people. There's a lot of really smart, hardworking, talented young people. I think the future is in good hands.