Stepping into Mike Shelton’s Blue Ridge Machine Works feels like entering into a world of pure imagination. Bright windows and shining machinery offer up a sense of possibility, while Shelton generously provides tours filled with discovery and delight. But you won’t find sugar-glistening gumdrops or waterfalls of flowing chocolate here — the shop may be filled with innovative energy, but the elves have been replaced with expert programmers and CAD designers. Here in this world-class machine shop serving a global market, high-tech coordinate measuring machines quantify product configurations, precision CNC Machining Centers prototype new designs, while water jets carve through 4” aluminum sheets in acts of daily-evolving design.
“I love the ability to be creative every day,” says owner Mike Shelton. “We never do the same thing twice. I’m not a production person. Here, we’re in the business of invention.”
Invention & Reinvention
Ask Shelton what he has made, and the stories veer to the otherworldly. Blue Ridge Machine Works has prototyped augers for drilling the surface of Mars. They have helped design and test submarine electronic parts, as well as the Earthside componentry for satellite waveguide communication systems. Interactive design work with a client on a tool to breach the concrete walls of buildings that have collapsed during search and rescue missions earned the team the “Invention of the Year” award by Popular Science magazine.
But if the scope of his inventiveness is vast, Shelton says Augusta County has always been home. Shelton grew up in his dad’s machine shop in Staunton before joining the Navy, and the first location for Blue Ridge Machine Works was in the town of Grottoes, a stone’s throw from the Augusta County line. “I’ve loved traveling overseas,” says Shelton. “Norway was beautiful, California was nice, but I’ve always wanted to be here. Whenever I’d crest Afton Mountain coming from Charlottesville, I was always happy to see the Valley.”
Now housed in a 15,000 square foot modern facility within Augusta’s Mill Place Commerce Park, Shelton’s inventiveness finds local manufacturing partners of all scales. When Shamrock Farms faced significant production delays to replace critical parts within their manufacturing process, Blue Ridge Machine Works reverse engineered the components and made 90 new ones locally, just one door down from their facility. When Flow Hydration’s Augusta facility faces similar supply chain disruptions or part breakages, Blue Ridge Machine Works is their local creative supply partner. In its early days Cadence, then known as Specialty Blades, was perfecting their blade manufacturing processes, and Shelton worked to construct the parts for their early machines. Today, Blue Ridge Machine Works makes tooling for them and prototypes some of their industrial blades.
“I love hiring engineers who think like machinists,” says Shelton. “But also, I’m a machinist who thinks like an engineer. We have incredibly high tech equipment here, but also, we can proceed using manually controlled machines. Whether we are working off CAD drawings or measuring a part that is physically in-hand, we can test, quantify, experiment, and adapt.”
For anyone who loves the joy of creation, Mike’s design of the Blue Ridge Machine Works building has you in mind. Its circular floor plan keeps visitors moving through stations, establishing new connections between tooling. A lab room with a keycard system allows visiting engineers to tinker and assemble, to put their hands on their own products even after hours. His inspection room, with microscope and precision measuring instruments, plots coordinates for reverse engineering. Mills, lathes, band saws, water jets, and computer directed CNCs glow under wide windows, and everywhere creative designers labor with plastics, brass, aluminums, and a seemingly infinite variety of steels. Each job is unique, and each shelf bears a layered history of invention.
A Family History in Augusta
When Shelton decided to make Augusta County his home, his first stop after his childhood years in his dad’s machine shop was purchasing an old three-sided pole barn in Grottoes. In 2002, he closed up the sides, poured a concrete floor, and invited his kids over to roller skate on the freshly dried slab. “My wife thought it was a play area for all ages,” says Shelton, grinning, remembering a shop that was one part rollerblades and one part machining.
As the shop work grew from part-time to full time, his children grew too. Once there only for the skating, Shelton’s daughter Megan returned first to help tile the office, then to upgrade the electrical conduit for the compressor. To both of their surprises, she stayed to help with the invoicing and accounting. Today, she is Blue Ridge Machine Works’ office manager.
As the Shelton family involvement grew, so too did his desire to give back to his community, and Shelton has served on advisory boards for both Blue Ridge Community College and Valley Career and Technical Center.
But the best part remains, says Shelton, that “I get to share in, to enter into the process of other people’s dreams — to watch them go places.” Shelton says he’s always been a can-do, DIY kind of person, but a cornerstone of his joy is being able to share that inventiveness with others.
“It sometimes gets me in trouble,” says Shelton. “I just can’t say no!”
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To learn more about Blue Ridge Machine Works and their full service, modern machine shop, visit https://brmw-va.com
