I left a good job so I'd stop missing my own life.
Black Pearl Automation is a one-shop answer to a problem I spent thirteen years watching from the inside. Here's how it started, and who it's named for.
I'm from Lascassas. Not moved-here-from-somewhere-else from Lascassas — from here, and I've never left. That matters more than it sounds like it should. When I tell a customer in Rutherford County I'll be there in the morning, I'm not driving in from three counties over, and my name is attached to the work in front of people I'll see at the store on Saturday.
I started out running a welding and machine shop in Murfreesboro. Metal, heat, tolerances, deadlines — that was the first half of my education.
The second half was thirteen years at Nissan's vehicle assembly plant in Smyrna, most of it as a senior engineer. That's where I learned controls and automation on equipment that could not be allowed to stop. It's also where I learned networking and Windows systems administration, because on a plant floor nobody gets to treat those as separate jobs. A robot that can't reach the network is an expensive statue. A camera nobody can pull footage from is a decoration. When the line goes down at 2 a.m., nobody cares which discipline the fault belongs to — they care that somebody in the building understands all of it.
It was a good job and I learned an enormous amount there. But a plant that size asks for a great deal of your life, and for a long time I handed it over.
What changed was a funeral. A member of my family had given that plant thirty-four years. He retired, and not long after, he found out he had cancer. He was gone two years later. Standing at that service, I ran the math on my own life and got a different answer than I'd gotten the week before. I believe the Lord was telling me plainly to go — to build something of my own, and to be there for my family while I still had the chance to be.
Everything about how this shop runs comes out of that decision. I'm not trying to build the biggest automation company in Tennessee. I'm trying to do excellent work for a manageable number of customers, stand behind it personally, and still be home for dinner. Those goals turn out to be compatible — and the customers who want that kind of relationship tend to be the ones worth having.
Why "Black Pearl"
The company is named for my youngest daughter, Lillian Pearl.
Lillian is fully disabled. She is also, without question, the rarest and most valuable thing in my life — and a black pearl is the rarest form the pearl takes. That's the whole meaning behind the name.
It's also the reason the work-life part of this isn't marketing language for me. I left a career to be present for her and for the rest of my family. That shapes what I take on, how I schedule it, and how straight I am with people about what I can and can't do well.
What thirteen years on a plant floor taught me about vendors
I spent a lot of that time as the customer — the engineer stuck between a controls contractor, a fabricator, and an IT department who had never spoken to each other, holding the bag when the seams between them failed. Black Pearl is built to not be that.
One shop owns the whole problem
Robot, PLC, panel, weldment, machined part, and the network underneath all of it. There's no seam to argue over because there's no second contractor on the other side of it.
You talk to the person doing the work
No account manager relaying messages to a technician you'll never meet. When you call, you get the person who wrote the logic or pulled the cable.
Documentation is yours
Drawings, diagrams, configurations, and credentials get written down and handed over. If you ever replace me, you should be able to do it without starting from zero. Holding a customer hostage with undocumented work is something I watched happen and won't do.
I'll tell you no
If a job isn't a good fit, or the honest answer is that you don't need what you're asking for, you'll hear that instead of a quote. I'd rather keep a customer for ten years than win one project.
I also write some of this down as I go. Shop notes is where I put the plain-English version of questions customers actually ask — what AS9100 and ITAR registration really mean when you're picking a shop, whether a cobot pays for itself, what to send with an RFQ so you get a fast quote. No gated downloads, no sales pitch.
The paperwork behind the handshake
A personal shop still has to clear the bar that serious customers set. Black Pearl is built to work in regulated supply chains and on systems where a mistake is expensive.
Tell me what needs to run better
Whether it's a cell that keeps faulting, a panel that needs building, or a network nobody has looked after in five years — call me and we'll figure out whether I'm the right person for it.