Jack Rosemark remembers crawling under an aluminum hull, bucking rivets. His grandfather owned a small business that manufactured airboats, the kind commonly used in the Everglades’ shallow waters. Riveting those aluminum hulls gave him his first taste of metal manufacturing.
Fast forward more than two decades. The founder of Freedom Fabricators in Jupiter, Fla., stands in front of a large press brake and its touchscreen controller, again working aluminum—this time on a part with multiple positive and negative flanges, created with sophisticated backgauging and precision-ground tooling staged across the 14-ft. bed.
Rosemark caught the metal manufacturing bug a long time ago, and his story gives a kind of entrepreneurial “recipe,” especially for those looking to get into the precision side of the business. It starts with entrepreneurial drive; involves technical curiosity, focus, and smart technology investment; and ends with a good strategy that prepares the operation for the road ahead.
Entrepreneurial Drive
After high school, Rosemark went to work for Sikorsky’s fabrication and assembly plant, also in Jupiter, eventually becoming senior fabricator. In 2018 he made the jump to Aerojet Rocketdyne, where he helped manufacture the RL-10 rocket engine. Throughout all this, he became versed in Six Sigma and lean manufacturing. He knew about sheet metal, but he also knew about manufacturing efficiency, including the importance of quick changeover and keeping jobs on the move. Any wasted motion meant jobs weren’t progressing as quickly as they could be.
