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J.E.M. F/X
A MAKE ONE - MAKE IT NOW
t 18 Elia Popov went to work at Universal keep up without automation,” explains Elia. “I looked at Studios theme park’s in-house engineering what a company called FXPerts and John Frazier was department as an apprentice. His dad, doing and wanted to do better, and felt that we had to
Paul Popov Sr, taught him to weld at 11 and he’s been do better. John Frazier was the first to have a CNC mill,
fabricating since. “The studios have a way to figure out your strengths and I had a real aptitude for electrical and hydraulics,” tells Elia. “I did PLC’s, electrical panels and whatnot, just working my way up.” When he transitioned over from rides to the movie side of the business, he had a lot of experience in automating things that were not really being automated at the time. “When I got into the special effects side of things, they were using a nail, piece of wood and a wire called a nail board, and still do “I came in with a small group of techs using AutoCad and PLCs and started programming automation and people looked at us like we were crazy.”
Growing up in and around shops Elia took notes on everything. What worked and what didn’t, and why. His dream was to have his own place, and his vision was taking automation to the fore. “No disrespect to the pioneers who came before me, but I saw the studios expanding exponentially and there was no way the industry could
the first CNC plasma cutter, he built his own water jet. He revolutionized the industry and set a bar for me to go after. I incorporated in 1995 and I had this wonderful mentor Thaine Morris, a legend in this business. He set me up with a ghetto place in LA and just let me flourish. What you see here is the evolution of an industry that hates evolution. Our predecessors wanted everything the same, copy cat, copy cat, copy cat. My generation came in and said we are going to stop plasma cutting by hand, have shops with proper ventilation systems and automate anything we could for speed and accuracy.”
J.E.M.F/XInc.makestheirhomeinValencia,California. They have a 30,000sq.ft. building for manufacturing, a 30,000sq.ft. building for rentals, a few acres of outdoor storage, a couple of satellite setups across the country and three fully mobile fab shops for use on set. J.E.M. F/X’s current roster of machines include: three Flow water jets, one Haas VF1, one Haas VF5 with 4th axis table, two
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CNC WEST August/September 2021