Meet the Owner

Hi, I am Ben Thomas, I am the owner and operator of BT Manufacturing and I want to share some of my background with you. I come from a family of machinist and manufactures. Two of my Grandparents were Machinist and so was my father before he moved into the industrial/packaging service industry. It all started for me back in 2002 when Dad bought his first Bridgeport and small engine lathe. A lot of the machining we did during these early years was repair work on heavy equipment or reproducing broken parts. I was always observing and learning which set a solid foundation for the next part of my journey to the local Carroll County Career and Technology Center during my high school years.

I spent a semester in their engineering program where I was introduced the 3d CAD modeling Autodesk Inventor Software. I enjoyed it but need to be more hands on and asked to transfer to the machine shop program for my senior year. With small but not insignificant experience I gained in my youth I was able to excel in the program. I was fortunate to have teachers that helped to cultivate me and push me in the right direction. After graduating at the top of the class I was given a job opportunity to work at a small family owned machine shop.

I spent the next 8 year learning and developing my skills as a machinist and programmer in a challenging R&D shop environment. A lot of the work we did here was for the defense and aerospace industries. All during this time I was working evening with my father and building up the shop at home with his help. We have cultivated some very unique skills through out this time from the interesting range of jobs that we would take on. The most important of which have been machine design and mechanical troubleshooting.

After 8 years at my first real job I was ready for a new challenge. I decided to leave and begin working full time out of the shop we have built. Things were good, then they got slow. I was only busy part time after the first year, so I started to explore some other opportunities since I had the freedom of time and self employment. I began moving, installing, and rebuilding Corrugated Boxing Machinery. This was a great time since I got to travel and expand my experience in machine design and mechanical and electrical troubleshooting. Yet my true passion has always been manufacturing. During my time traveling I began to understand what a shortage of skilled labor existed in the industrial services and manufacturing industries. That is were I have begun focusing my energy, the manufacturing industry.

I’ve come back to my roots and made the machine shop my number one focus, and I have a dream for it. One day it will be a large scale machine shop that offers production machining services along with the agility to produce affordable small lot custom engineered components in a short period of time. All of this will be produced by team members that are taking part in an active apprenticeship program where they all learn from each other. I want to do my part to bring manufacturing strength back to our communities. It’s going to take time and it’s going to take effort but anything worth doing will. I hope you’ve enjoyed this description of my journey and hope you can become part of the next chapter!

If you are interested in working together to build the next generation of manufactures please send you resume to the email listed in the contact section. We are always looking for people the join the team!