Page 24 - 2021 CNC West April-May

WOLFRAM MANUFACTURING
Nathan carries a lot of anxiety at night when the machines are run- ning so he knew that deploying the Caron system was the only way he could get a good night’s rest.
USING TECH TO MAKE MANUFACTURING T THE BEST VIDEO GAME THERE IS
he lone star state is filled with idioms, traditions, start my own business.” After earning a business degree and a uniqueness that can best be described from Rice University, he gained experience from a few as .....Texas. Depending on where you’re from shops before landing at Wyman Gordon as operations
“everything is bigger, no one should mess with you and manager. “I was running the machine shop and still not
something about playing with bulls and getting the horns are considered to be universal truths. Never eat chili with beans, and don’t be the person who is all hat and no cattle. But one saying you don’t hear a lot of is “I’m opening a machine shop and not hiring machinists.”
Nathan Byman’s no machinist concept for Wolfram Manufacturing has nothing to do with geographic colloquialisms, but instead stems directly from data and science. Nathan, a mechanical engineer spent years custom tailoring his career path knowing all along the zenith would be building his own company. “My first interaction with machining came from the design side,” tells Wolfram Manufacturing CEO Nathan Byman. “Soon after college I went to work for Lockheed Martin as a design engineer on the F16 program in Fort Worth. I had my own internal plan of rotating through different roles and responsibilities at different companies to build a foundation of manufacturing. The ultimate goal was to
a machinist,” continues Nathan. “It was there that I really began to think about getting closer to it and opening my own shop. We had a strike, and I spent a week on the floor running the machines and just had a blast. A few years later I went to work for a high end shop outside Houston. We were at the top of the world with six facilities around the globe and more tech than you could shake a stick at. It was contract manufacturing with pure craftsman doing one off 100k parts for high end oil and gas, US Navy, NASA, and nuclear submarines. You could go talk to anyone and learn something amazing every day. Then I woke up one morning in 2008 to global economic meltdown. It was a formative experience to say the least, early in my time there I was briefing the night shift machinists on something when one of them steps forward and asks what gives me the right or the knowledge to be able to tell them how to do their job. Well absolutely nothing gives me the right to do that, but we can talk, collect some data,
22 www.CNC-West.com
CNC WEST April/May 2021
Article by Sean Buur Photos Supplied by Wolfram Manufacturing