A life spent laser cutting in the job shop

Gary Brockman, president of Custom Laser Inc., began his career in lasers back in 1977—when the original “Star Wars” was in theaters, and The FABRICATOR magazine was just seven years old. Photos courtesy of TRUMPF Inc. Photography by Douglas Levere.

One fateful paint job in 1977 changed Gary Brockman’s life.

Today Brockman is co-founder and president of Custom Laser Inc. (CLI) in Lockport, N.Y. But back when the original “Star Wars” hit theaters, he was at Diversified Manufacturing Inc., another nearby fabricator and machine shop that remains successful to this day.

Before that paint job in 1977, Brockman had moved around various departments within Diversified, from production control to customer service. For a time he even worked at the company’s Merritt Machinery division that made and serviced plywood-making machines.

As business slowed, the young Brockman helped where needed in the shop. One day a supervisor asked if he’d have time to paint the walls in his department. That department just happened to have some rare equipment for a 1970s-era job shop. It was there Brockman got his first taste of the industrial laser.

To celebrate its 50th year, The FABRICATOR is sharing those “first tastes” and uncovering how they led to careers in a business that, from a technological perspective, looks nothing like it did 50 years ago. From a human perspective, though, much hasn’t changed. Successful people in metal fabrication aren’t out for a quick buck. They’re in it for the joy of hands-on problem-solving and seeing the fruition of their efforts, not in a PowerPoint presentation or Excel worksheet, but in a physical product fabricated to spec and on time.

A Fateful Paint Job

At Diversified Manufacturing during a few slow months in the late 1970s, Brockman spent weeks helping where he could, deburring here, grinding and brazing there. Then one day the laser department supervisor approached him.

“He asked me if I knew how to paint,” Brockman recalled, adding that the walls were in dire need of a fresh coat. He hesitated, thought about his limited to nonexistent painting experience, then said what any eager 20-something would say. “‘Sure!’ He then saw what I did and said, ‘Wow, you really did a great job. You paid attention to detail. I want you in my department.’” That invitation launched Brockman’s long career in industrial lasers and metal fabrication.

Brockman has no PhD in photonics or any other advanced degree. But when the department supervisor saw his careful attention to detail—the perfect masking, leaving no spot on the wall unpainted—he knew that Brockman could be a topnotch operator and laser technician.

The company billed itself at the time as the first laser job shop east of the Mississippi. Brockman can’t verify the claim, but considering that the company got its first laser in the early 1970s, it’s quite plausible. The recently launched FABRICATOR magazine wouldn’t cover laser cutting of sheet metal until 1974.

Back then Diversified wasn’t laser cutting sheet metal. The company had two industrial Nd:YAGs, which it mainly used to score ceramic substrates, though it did laser-drill thin sheet metal from time to time. After working in the department for about a month, the supervisor went on vacation and, as Murphy’s law would have it, the company’s workhorse laser broke down. Customers were screaming, the supervisor was out of reach entirely (a healthily common thing back in the pre-email and cellphone era), and service techs weren’t available at a moment’s notice.

Gary Brockman with his daughter Erin Verghese, company secretary, and son Greg Brockman, vice president. Not pictured is Rachel Lewis, treasurer, who was off having a baby girl. (Gary chuckled. “That was her excuse, but we’ll give her a pass this time.”)

“I had always worked on cars and was mechanically minded,” Brockman said, “so I just got the manual out and fixed it.” The flash lamps had broken, which contaminated the end of the YAG rod. Brockman found replacement lamps and rods, realigned the necessary components, and got the system working again.

“My supervisor came back and asked, ‘How did you figure out how to do this?’ And I said, ‘I just got the manual out and fixed it.’ And he said, ‘All right, you’re going to be in here [the laser department] from now on.’”

Several years later his supervisor left for a sales job at Coherent. Diversified conducted a nationwide search for a replacement, but couldn’t find anyone with the right experience—no surprise, given how new industrial lasers were then in many facets of manufacturing. “I wanted the job, and I just kept pursuing it,” Brockman recalled, “and eventually I got it.”

By the early 1980s Brockman was managing a laser department that was delving more and more into metals processing. The company bought CO2 lasers, optics, and heads and retrofitted them all to machine tool bases for drilling and cutting and to rotary tables for welding.

In 1984 Brockman began pursing what was then a new technology: laser engraving. The owners hesitated, though. And so, like so many entrepreneurs in this business, Brockman marched ahead. In 1986 Brockman, working with one of the owner’s sons, John Tillotson Jr., purchased a laser engraver and marker and installed it in his garage, and launched a new company called Custom Laser Engraving.

Diversified’s owners knew Brockman and Tillotson were planning to leave and pursue the custom engraving business full-time, so they struck a deal. In 1988 Diversified sold its cutting and welding lasers to Custom Laser Engraving and even leased it space. At that point the new company officially changed its name to Custom Laser Inc.

A Familiar Evolution

The partners expanded the business, with Tillotson focusing on laser engraving and Brockman focusing on building what at the time was a relatively new and growing niche in laser processing: laser cutting.

As the 1980s progressed into the 1990s, so did the laser technology, sometimes to the company’s benefit, other times to its detriment. Regarding the latter, laser engraving machines got smaller and cheaper, and before long customers started buying their own machines. “The bottom fell out of the engraving job shop market,” Brockman said.

With the engraving business diminished, Brockman bought out his partner in 2009 and began focusing entirely on laser drilling and cutting. From there the fabricator followed a growth path familiar to many in this business, that of process diversification. Initially customers came to CLI for its laser processing, especially laser cutting. But then they demanded more, including forming, machining, part leveling, welding, laser tube cutting, and, most recently, powder coating. Like so many others, CLI launched as a process specialist but evolved into a full-service, one-stop shop. That two-person garage shop of the 1980s is now a 70-plus-employee custom fabricator.

What’s Different Now

Much has changed since Brockman spent days and nights in his 300-ft. garage, tinkering with his newly acquired laser equipment to see what was possible and what wasn’t. He learned what made the resonators tick, and he learned which G- and M-code worked best for which material type, thickness, cut geometry, and desired edge quality.

He also remembers seeing higher-laser-power systems like something out of “Star Trek,” forever unattainable for a small job shop like his. “I remember in the 1980s seeing a 15-kW industrial laser, and the resonator filled the entire room,” Brockman recalled. The laser wasn’t at a job shop, of course, but at a large R&D facility—so different from CLI’s shop floor.

“Well, now CLI has a 10-kW laser cutting system with a laser source the size of a small freezer,” Brockman said. Although these high-powered machines aren’t inexpensive, “they’re also not unattainable for a shop like ours. It’s amazing how fast you can process materials compared to how it used to be. It’s just unreal. It has really changed the nature of the job.”

This is a big reason that CLI’s adding a new building this year. The place will be designed around a tower system feeding material to several TRUMPF lasers. The shop does have material loading automation, but to keep up with its growing laser cutting capacity, CLI has no choice but to automate the entire process.

Because the nature of the job has changed, so has the employee. Brockman grew up working on cars, gaining a mechanical aptitude that eventually allowed him to pick up a manual and fix a laser resonator on the first try, without a day of formal training. Even the most complex of machine tools had a mechanical logic to them. This tube affects this YAG rod, and these mirrors need to be aligned this way to center the beam. Patiently and methodically studying the manual’s schematics, Brockman learned the laser to such a degree that it helped him build the foundation of his business. Customers came to CLI because those at CLI knew lasers as few others did.

Process-specific expertise is still valued, but it’s often not enough. Laser cutting is a mature technology, after all. More customers looking to outsource want the entire package. This, combined with modern controls and offline 3D simulation (a world away from editing G-code), has created a far different industry than the one Brockman painted himself into, so to speak, in the 1970s.

A case in point is Brockman’s daughter. Erin Verghese, company secretary, focuses on purchasing and accounting and is helping to build the company’s materials purchasing database. She’s working with software developers to perfect a dynamic materials-purchasing database that updates with every order.

“It’s all part of a larger system, which Greg [Brockman’s son] is spearheading, that we hope will eventually tie everything together,” Brockman explained. The effort involves integrating custom software into the company’s quoting, purchasing, and shop management systems.

“We use off-the-shelf ERP now,” Brockman explained, “but we’re looking at generating our own software that will do everything we want it to do, and that includes allowing customers to see what’s going on in the shop.” This also includes a bidding system that can respond quickly to requests for quotes.

Many who excel in this business now are at home with software and tend to take a systems-thinking approach. Customers want the total package, and a smoothly operating system—with quick quoting and near-perfect on-time delivery performance—should be able to deliver it to them not in four weeks but within a few days.

Brockman’s three children work in the business. Verghese’s sister Rachel Lewis, treasurer, handles HR and accounting, and her brother Greg Brockman, vice president, focuses on production control and general management, but all three are involved in every facet of the enterprise. Their father has stepped away from the day to day, and in doing so has observed just how different the business has become.

Gary grew up working on carbureted engines; his children grew up with computers and smartphones. That’s turning out to be a very good thing, considering the increasing role of software in every facet of metal fabrication.

What Hasn’t Changed

About 10 years ago Brockman saw his first laser tube cutting machine and immediately saw the potential. He talked with his salesperson who in turn put out feelers—and the news wasn’t good. Customers had no need for such a thing. After all, their products weren’t tubular, and if they were, well, the band saw was working just fine, thank you very much.

“Customers were telling us no, but I said the heck with it, we’re buying one anyway,” Gary said. “I could just see that there was work that people just couldn’t see.”

During the initial months after its installation, the tube laser ran once, maybe twice a week. But then, slowly, the work came. Salespeople brought cut samples showing tab and slot assemblies, describing just how much customers could save by changing the product design. Assembly times would plummet, quality would skyrocket, and so would profits.

The bet paid off, much like the bet Brockman took in the early 1980s, launching a laser job shop long before it was a sure thing. Such bets have driven CLI’s growth for much of its history, just as they’ve driven The FABRICATOR magazine’s content for 50 years. Call it entrepreneurial faith, an underlying belief that there is always a better way to get the job done.