"We always had a passion for bikes," Sebastian said. "When we went up to Arizona, I saw how many guys were customizing their bikes. My dad and I had an idea of opening up a business to help these guys make the bikes look the way they wanted. It all started from there." So in 2002, the Glods acquired some manufacturing space and bought a Haas VF2 mill and a Haas HS2 horizontal mill with a single tombstone and began executing their business plan nights and weekends while they continued to work their day jobs.
In those early years, the business floundered because they were attempting to program their equipment by hand or use limited CAM software products. After two years of fruitless struggle, Ted Glod asked his son to invite their local Mastercam Reseller in to see if this software might make a difference.
After a little training, Sebastian was creating numerous part designs in Mastercam Solids and generating mill and lathe part programs that his father could execute at the push of a button, secure in the knowledge that computer simulation had been used to verify that the toolpaths were safe and that they would remove exactly the right amount of material. It wasn't long before Sebastian had built up a library of geometries that allowed him to quickly create custom part designs and the toolpaths to manufacture them
As Sebastian's programming proficiency increased, SMT got new and different types of manufacturing opportunities. This required investing in additional Haas equipment and manpower and setting up a distribution network.
In just five years, the company has gone from a part time machine shop failing in the Arizona desert, to a thriving small business supporting seven full-time employees and supplying motorcycle parts all over the world. |