No Time for Bed for Sales Engineer, Paul
TLM Sales Engineer, Paul Smith, is an engineer’s engineer.
With a career that started as a qualified Drop Forge Engineer, through to Applications Engineer to Laser Installation Engineer and a stint as a medal maker before arriving at our Bromsgrove offices, Paul has certainly paid his dues.
Bromsgrove roots
Paul was born in Birmingham. His parents both worked for the MOD, his father a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy. Educated in Bromsgrove, he’s lived in Bromsgrove for around 30 years. Paul is married to Wendy and is father to two children, Scott and Ellie, and is grandfather to three grandsons with a fourth grandchild on the way.
Leisure pursuits include motorbikes, football and photography. He combines two of these by taking photographs on match days of local team Droitwich Spa FC, some of which are published by the local newspaper.
His love of motorbikes sometimes takes him to the Isle of Man where he acts as a marshal for the TT races.
Anywhere and everywhere
As mentioned, Paul started his career as a qualified Drop Forge Engineer at Garringtons, Bromsgrove. At Garringtons, he was part of the Engineering team that introduced CNC technology to the company, creating Europe’s most advanced toolroom in a £9 million investment.
A four year stint at HK Technologies working as an Applications Engineer selling CNC engraving machines to engraving companies and Mints around the UK followed.
This experience of working with Mints led him to joining a UK software company called Delcam as UK Sales Manager. His main responsibility was for a product called ArtCAM Pro, used by many industries and Mints around the world where he increased sales threefold. (ArtCAM Pro is now Carveco, developed to work with Windows 10 and 11 as a perfect partner for laser cutting and engraving and available from TLM.)
After 10 years with Delcam, Paul moved on to lasers as UK Operations Manager for the German laser company, Acsys Lasertechnik. This is where the sleepless nights really set in. As well as managing the UK office, Paul was selling, training and installing in the UK and worldwide, from Miami to Canberra, Australia.
His worst installation was in Osaka, Japan. A problematic machine required him to talk to his German counterparts who would only speak to him in their own local time. With an 8 hour time difference, there was no sleep for Paul – for a week!
A medal maker
From the Bromsgrove offices of Acsys, Paul moved down the road to the Bromsgrove offices of a company called the Worcestershire Medal Services. As Technical Development Manager, he helped win contracts that gave the company a monopoly on producing all of the MOD’s medal work.
One of his career highlights was in producing an Order of the Garter using CAD for the modelling and laser and 3D printing for the rest of the work. Traditionally this was all done by hand.
Now at TLM, Paul sells, services and maintains FOBA, Optogon and Universal Laser Systems equipment and Carveco software, all of which makes him a busy man.
There’s still the occasional sleepless night. On a trip to Optogon in Germany, delays meant boarding a flight from Munich to Dresden at 10.30pm. Just as Paul had got on the plane, the airport’s thunderstorm alarm went off. Five hours later Paul and his fellow passengers returned to the terminal because Dresden did not accept flights after midnight.
Despite having shared the biggest bedroom of his life with the greatest number of bedmates ever, Paul had not slept a wink. A full day’s work the next day, Paul finally hit the sack at 10.00pm!
Paul is one of TLM’s nationwide team of fully trained and experienced engineers. If you have a maintenance or service requirement or would like details of TLM’s Preventative Maintenance Contracts, please visit sales@tlm-laser.com
For further information on Carveco relief modeller software, please contact TLM using the same link.