Kyle Szczypienski earned his CNC machining and programming chops at Roush Industries — a company that was first made famous for its custom automotive parts — shortly after graduating with an associate degree in automotive and diesel technologies in 2006. At Roush, Szczypienski (pronounced Shuh-Pin-Ski) was first assigned to the company’s shop floor to learn about feeds and speeds, depths of cuts and programming strategies via direct experience with an array of 30 CNC machines. But Szczypienski’s acute interest in programming was hard to keep secret, and it quickly earned him the dubious honor of writing code for all 20 of the plant’s other machinists on a wide variety of machine tools.
It was a 1969 Pontiac Lemans, though, that ultimately led the young Szczypienski toward opening his own shop. Still living at home where he kept the old dragster parked in front of the house — a yard decoration that his parents failed to appreciate — Szczypienski needed a place to work on restoring it to its former glory. He purchased an old building on the outskirts of Detroit where he planned to work on the Lemans and possibly establish a side hustle fixing race cars.
Story courtesy of Modern Machine Shop.
