I started out 25+ years ago with a woodworking shop as a newly married home owner who needed furniture. Not long after that I started roadracing motorcycles and needed more metalworking equipment so bought a Bridgeport, a lathe, and a MIG welder. Most of what I made for years was motorcycle related but my day job is an engineer. I design robotic assembly equipment and it's pretty common when a machine is being built I'll have an idea late in the day and fabricate the parts at home that evening so I can hit the ground running at work the next day instead of getting in the queue at the machine shop. In fact, ten minutes ago I finished up this little detail for fastening a pneumatic gripper to a robot on a machine that will assemble diesel engine controllers at a plant in Poland.