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Eli Plaskett Senior Associate Editor
Eli Plaskett joined the Modern Machine Shop team in the fall of 2017. He is a native of Youngstown, Ohio and graduated from Ohio University in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and English. After college, he wrote freelance and traveled the country before moving to Cincinnati, Ohio.
He is currently Senior Associate Editor at Modern Machine Shop and Content Writer and Designer at Gardner Business Media, the magazine’s parent company. He writes and edits blog posts and feature-length stories for the magazine as well as for its sister publications.
His articles include: Building Capacity Through Automation, Putting People First: a Profitable Strategy, and A Job Shop Approach to Automation.
Can Cooperation Out-Compete Competition?
Spearheaded by Rego-Fix, the Center for Machining Excellence gives OEMs the chance to cooperate and provide a more comprehensive service to their customers, and it gives machine tool users the chance to look at all the component elements that go into a machining cell.
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AI Creates CAD Files From Scan Data
While 3D visual scanners are useful, converting a visual scan to a usable CAD file can be a time-consuming process. With generative AI, it may be much simpler and faster.
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What Drives a One-Man Machining Operation?
As the owner of his own machine shop, Mason Montalvo finds the drive to keep going in the joy of meeting an interesting challenge.
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How Precision Blanks Help This Aerospace Shop Build Better Parts
Internal stress in thin metal parts can lead to warped components and scrapped work. Matrix Machine found a better way by sourcing precision-ground blanks from TCI Precision Metals. Here’s how that decision freed up capacity and made critical parts more predictable.
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How I Made It: Aneesa Muthana
Aneesa Muthana grew up helping out at her parents’ Chicago grinding shop before striking out on her own in the ‘90s. When business slowed down dramatically, she embraced change and built her machine shop into a modern facility using Swiss-type CNC machines.__PRESENT
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3 Trends From PMTS 2025
The 2025 Precision Machining Technology Show provided an excellent look at the variety of machining solutions catering to the U.S. metalworking industry, including a range of automation solutions for turned and milled parts.
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Digital Twin Provides Real-Time Feedback on Part Quality
By gathering data directly from the sensors of the CNC machine, the digital twin offered by Gemineering can identify whether a part is in tolerance and even identify the moment in the toolpath when a part fails to achieve tolerance.
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View From My Shop: The Challenge of a One-Man Machine Shop
Mason Montalvo took up the challenge of starting his own shop running manual machine tools to produce complex parts.
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Machine Monitoring Integrates With ERP to Reduce Errors
By investing in machine monitoring that links machine data with the shop’s ERP system, this machine shop broke down communication barriers and dramatically reduced errors.
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Function Over Form
While the metalworking industry includes a wide variety of machine shops, it is worthwhile remembering that the differences obscure a key commonality: they all run on human ingenuity.
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Five-Axis CAM Strategies Cut Cycle Time for Two Shops
After being acquired by the same parent company, two shops found that working together and sharing knowledge improved both of their bottom lines.
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Lessons From a Lean Shop
This custom ring manufacturer puts effort into Kaizen principles that help it to produce custom works of art at a high volume while spending minimal work on administrative duties.
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