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24 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST October/November 2017 free because he couldn’t figure out how to get the machine to drill holes. He could get it in position, but manually had to raise and lower the table to do the drilling. “It was a simple task that even a basic CNC programmer would know,” laughs Scott. “I worked for them 14 years and most of that time I figured I had got away with the fib. Turns out they knew all the time, but ap- preciated my hard effort.” The end result was that Scott became a pretty good programmer. After a brief stint at office work in Hawaii, Scott retuned to the mainland for what ended up being just what he needed for his life to fall into place. He went back to work at Fourward and reconnected with Christine, a girl he met a few years earlier. “Even now I am still amazed she wanted anything to do with me,” explains Scott. “She isn’t in the office today, but I have her to thank for everything.” Soon after a long-time family friend, ‘grandpa Harold,’ set Scott up his own workspace in the back of his airplane hanger where he could do his own projects on the weekends. Scott was working full time at Fourward, part time in the hanger and part time for another local company called Gates Underwater. “Grandpa Harold saw something in me that I hadn’t seen yet,” explains Scott. “He’d noticed a change and got me working for myself. In the span of a year I had got married, had a child, bought a house and started a business. Our first machines were a used Haas VF1 and a used Clausing Storm lathe. I even still have them running in the shop.” The digital camera market was set to explode and no one was making an underwater housing to meet that demand. Gates Un- derwater focused on Camcorder housings so when Scott went to them with the idea of manufacturing one for the stills camera market they had no issues with him building his own. AMI’s first housing was machined from aluminum for the AGFA 1680 camera. It was a success and he became more and more busying doing his own jobs rather than working at Fourward. “I was tak- ing off any time we were slow at Fourward to build housings,” tells Scott. “It got to the point that they said I should come back when I can find time for them, well I never went back and here we sit.” A company called Watershot contacted Scott and they earned a contract to do the underwater movie camera housings for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. “We did housings lens control devices, you name it,” continues Scott. “We became Scott’s love of Okuma began when they picked up a used lathe at auction. He eventually traded it in on a newer Captain L470M with a 12” chuck, 3k spindle & VDI live tooling. The Hardinge Bridgeport has only been in service for a couple months. The new machine with Chick Foundation and QwikLOKs have netted huge production gains.