Makingchips | Equipping Manufacturing Leaders

At 17 years old, Michael King bought a brand-new CNC machine despite never having seen one in person. With no formal trade school background or apprenticeship, he relied on years of self-directed learning, curiosity, and a steady stream of YouTube machining content to take the leap. He sectioned off space in his dad's warehouse, installed a Haas DM2, and started figuring it out in real time. What began as a personal interest in building things quickly turned into real production work. A stainless steel contract gave him early traction. A used Swiss machine that arrived broken forced him to learn diagnostics and hand-code thousands of lines of G-code. Over time, one machine became several, including a dual-spindle lathe and a five-axis Matsura, forming the foundation of what is now The Monk Works. In this episode of MakingChips Generation CNC, we talk through how Michael has approached growth with unusual discipline. He's kept overhead low, relied entirely on word-of-mouth instead of advertising, and leaned he