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The Machinist Who Went From Sweeping Floors to $6.8M

How Rodrigo Esparza turned a used CNC machine, $58,000 in savings, and an aerospace certification nobody thought he could get into the most precise manufacturing operation in San Antonio

The part Rodrigo Esparza is holding is about the size of a deck of cards, machined from a single block of 7075 aluminum, and it is very nearly perfect.

He turns it over in his hands slowly, checking a chamfer at one edge with his thumbnail, bringing it close to examine the surface finish under the fluorescent light of the inspection room. It will eventually be bolted into a ground support assembly for a military aircraft. It must be within one-thousandth of an inch of specification across eleven critical dimensions. Esparza already knows it passes — his quality system flagged it green before it ever reached his hands — but he checks it anyway.

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