My first actual job was at a Thrifty market in Morgan Hill and it only lasted a week, I decided I didn’t want to work (at least there), HA!

I then did some time at Colosseum Pizza because a girl I was fond of worked there, It worked, I got the girl, and I still make Pizza today, but it’s in a wood fired Pizza Oven that I built myself!

I actually worked for my uncle for a summer at his machine shop ABC Manufacturing where I swept the floors and deburred parts and got to run production on some CNC machines that were setup for me. This was the bottom of the ladder…

Shortly after graduation from Live Oak High in 1988, I moved to Campbell to live with my Dad and I started working full time at Polcraft, our family business.

I started out learning manual machining skills on Mills, Lathes, and Surface grinders. A year or two later we got our first Sinker EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining), it was a manual for positioning XY and had a servo Z axis for making cuts.

In 1991 we purchased our first CNC Wire EDM and that’s where I got introduced to CAD/CAM. This took me down the path of using CAD to design parts and CAM to apply toolpaths so that the CNC could make the cuts. At this time you could not simply import a .step file from a customer and apply tool paths like we do today. You had to actually recreate the work of the engineer so that you could make his parts. Although a bit tedious, it was a crash course into how to draw just about anything in CAD.

In 1994 I started Mark’s Custom Stuff or MCS, I used this business to contract Mechanical Engineering Services to our clients at Polcraft. I was designing tooling during the evenings and building those tools during the day. I took advantage of the autonomous capabilities of the EDM equipment to run production around the clock while I churned out more designs.

I used Autodesk’s AutoCAD, then Mechanical Desktop, and finally Inventor CAD software during these first few years of my engineering experience.

At MCS I also started developing websites for other machine shops. I ran an e-store out of marksmark.net selling some of the products that I designed.

In 2008 I was hired by Capella Photonics as a Senior Mechanical Engineer. I was already heavily engaged with them through MCS and Polcraft designing and building the tooling to assemble their novel WSS (Wavelength selective Switch). This job first introduced me to the micro-optics world where I worked closely with the Mechanical and Optical Engineers that designed the product to engineer solutions to assemble the complex system to sub-micron tolerances.

I used Zemax files in my Inventor (CAD) assemblies to precisely locate tooling relative to the actual rays of light that propagated through the system. I developed an active alignment system that was capable of placing and aligning over 20 optics sequentially to assemble the product. I transferred the process and tooling to our Contract Manufacturer Fabrinet in Thailand.

In June of 2012 I was laid off from Capella and immediately started working for Oclaro as a Principal Mechanical Engineer. I was asked to switch to Solidworks CAD software. I was part of a team that designed an OCM (optical channel monitor) for the telecom industry. I designed precision automated optical alignment systems and related tooling to produce this product. I transferred the process and tooling to Thailand.

The end of 2013 my group at Oclaro was acquired by II-VI where I continued my role as Principal Mechanical Engineer. I was part of a 5 man R&D team responsible for designing several free space optical devices for the telecom industry. I designed precision optical alignment systems with nanometer precision to produce these devices. I transferred the process and tooling to China. I was named on several patents for work done at this job.

I designed a fiber array and a means to produce it for Google fiber that is in production now. I did almost all the work myself including the transfer to Photop in China for production. I was awarded a patent for this design.

I was laid off from II-VI the end of 2017 and I started consulting full time with MCS right through the COVID-19 pandemic. I was setup to work remote so I faired well during those trying times. For 4 years I worked on more active alignment projects for micro-optics systems for my previous boss from Capella, who was now working for II-VI, the company that just laid me off!

I also consulted for Paramit R&D group where I got to do some micro-fluidic work for several bio-medical companies that were clients of Paramit.

In January of 2021 I was hired as a Senior Mechanical Engineer for Neatleaf, a start up in my home town of Scotts Valley. I developed the mechanics for a cable based agricultural Robot that has over 50 systems deployed at 30 customers across the US, CA, PR, and EU. I designed the mechanics, developed the production processes, and transferred it to a contract manufacturer. I also installed most of these systems at customer sites.

At this job, I was introduced to, and took a deep dive into 3D printing. We started out with two Prusa MK3S printers that were used for both in-house tooling as well as production printing for various parts of our system. We purchased an MK4IS and an XL with dual print heads and I became a master of those machines.

I also learned and used Onshape modeling software exclusively for this company, a very cool progression of CAD technology!

I designed the next generation of that system that was being prototyped just as the efforts to raise the next round of funding failed and the company went insolvent. It’s a tragic story as the product and the team were truly something special and I will miss working with all of them!

I was laid off in November of 2024 and I am currently looking for opportunities.