In this episode, we interview Ray Zaganto, who created a new concept called “The Hardware Store” for reaching his customers by being innovative, thinking outside the box and finding the Alpha Engineer. Your "first place" is your home.  Your ”second place" is the workplace.  The “third place” is another location that connects you into a community and facilitates creative interaction. A lot of companies do not have the resources to outfit a standalone location and create a third place, but as Ray said: “Make Your Shop a Destination.” In our Manufacturing News segment, we discuss an episode of the TV show, “The Good Wife” in relation to an episode about 3D printing. About MakingChips MakingChips is a weekly podcast that will equip leaders in the metalworking manufacturing industry with valuable content to utilize in their career and business. What makes MakingChips unique is the fact that we are in the trenches getting dirty, leading, managing, designing, solving problems and pushing productivity.  MakingChips is here for us to report back from the factory floor to tell you what worked and what didn’t work…we tell you the mistakes we made and what we are excited to try.  We want to understand your problems and leverage this community to find a solution. Our goal is to equip manufacturing leaders and for those leaders to influence others in the manufacturing industry. From Jim: I'm the owner of CARR Machine & Tool, Inc., a 2nd generation high precision CNC machine shop utilizing 3 and 4 axis CNC Machining Centers. I’ve been at this a long time and know machining like the back of my hand. Our company specialty is short to medium run jobs where we consistently hold tolerances of ± .0005 utilizing state-of-the-art tooling - which I get from Jason! From Jason: I'm the president of ZENGERS, a 3rd generation industrial supply company. I direct our team of metalworking specialists to decrease costs and increase productivity of our metalworking customers by applying the best tooling for the job and utilizing tool crib management technology.