About this episode

Dylan Jackson shares his unconventional journey into machining and entrepreneurship.

We flip the script on Dylan Jackson — co-owner of Proteum Machining and host of the Within Tolerance podcast — and dig into how he actually got here. Dylan didn’t follow a clean, traditional path. He struggled in engineering school, stumbled into machining through community college, and slowly found that the shop floor made more sense than the classroom ever did. From running parts for free just to learn, to buying a used CNC before he even had a real shop, to building Proteome into a high-en...

People in this episode

Host: Practical Machinist

Guest: Dylan Jackson

Topics covered

• machining
• career path
• engineering education
• CNC
• entrepreneurship

Keywords

• machinist
• engineering
• CNC
• Proteum Machining
• Within Tolerance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Proteum Machining, Within Tolerance

More episodes of The Impractical Machinists

• The Australian One-Man Shop That Chose to Downsize | 50 · May 26, 2026 · 1h 57m
• Big Shop Rules vs. Small Shop Freedom: Which One Destroys You Faster? | 49 · May 12, 2026 · 1h 45m
• How Much Work Do You Need Before Going Full-Time? | 47 · April 14, 2026 · 1h 18m
• When the Work Piles Up and the Programs Don't | 46 · March 31, 2026 · 1h 30m
• From a Union Aerospace Shop to Running His Own Machine Shop | 45 · March 17, 2026 · 1h 31m
• How One Guy Built a Movement… and Triggered the Internet | 44 · March 3, 2026 · 2h 5m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Impractical Machinists podcast page.