The man behind the machine

Tom Vrancken is not easy to pigeonhole. And that is precisely his greatest strength. As a technical consultant and machine father at Nobleo Technology, he bridges the worlds of engineering theory and hands-on craftsmanship with a versatility that is rare in the industry. With a career spanning over three decades and a role that cuts horizontally across every discipline in the company, Tom brings a perspective that is as broad as it is deep.

An unexpected opening

Tom’s path to Nobleo was shaped by circumstance and ambition. Before he started at Nobleo, he worked eight years at a global company that develops solutions to reduce rolling friction. He worked his way up from test engineer to laboratory manager, building an entire mechatronics lab from scratch. His department was eventually moved to France after a corporate restructuring. And he had no intention of following. By that point, Tom already knew Nobleo well. “They had been supplying machines to the lab I built. When the moment came to look elsewhere, Nobleo was high on my list,” he says.

“The informal atmosphere at their office in Eindhoven struck me straight away. I felt a real sense of ease, and I liked their no-nonsense mentality.”

The machine father

The title ‘machine father,’ a term used in the high-tech industry, captures something essential about how Tom works. It refers to ‘fathering’ a machine through its entire lifecycle: from the first sketch on paper to delivery and commissioning at the client’s site. “You virtually know everything there is to know about the machine,” he explains. Over the years, Tom has fulfilled that role on projects ranging from precision systems for a large chip manufacturer to large-scale industrial test setups and automated sorting systems for the food industry.

What he enjoys most is translating simple physical principles into robust systems that can perform millions of times under extreme conditions.“Technology is often surprisingly simple. But the environment it has to operate in turns it into a genuine challenge. A back-and-forth movement of one centimetre sounds trivial, until it needs to happen 70,000 times per hour, on a 70-tonne machine, with sub-millimetre precision every single time.”

Cement between the bricks

Tom’s career has never followed a single disciplinary path. He has worked on production lines, built laboratories, managed workshops, and contributed to projects across various domains, ranging from mechanics and hydraulics to pneumatics and control systems and more. That breadth gives him something rare: the ability to speak the language of the drawing office and the workshop floor with equal fluency. “I understand where the engineer is coming from,” he says, “but because I’ve done the hands-on work myself, I also know what the person actually building the system needs.” Nobleo’s Managing Director Rob Hendrikx once described him as ‘the cement between the bricks’ – the connective tissue that holds a project together. Tom appreciates the metaphor but is quick to add: “I’m nothing without the team. The best work happens when the right people come together.”

Teaching what he knows

Passing on that accumulated knowledge is something Tom takes seriously. He therefore helped develop a machining course so colleagues could learn to operate the workshop’s lathe and milling machine. What began as a practical response to a safety concern has since become a weekly fixture, drawing colleagues from every background. “That’s what I find most gratifying,” Tom says. “Seeing a software developer produce a proper turned component for the first time.” The course traces an arc that is not lost on Tom. “The skills I first learned as a student are the same ones I now pass on to my colleagues. Everything I’ve learned along the way, I can still use today,” he reflects.

Born to tinker

Outside work, Tom is just as passionate about engineering as he is on the job. Tom: “I have spent years restoring and rebuilding engines. First a classic American V8 from the 1960s, later a turbodiesel, stripping them down and putting them back together with modifications of my own.” His approach to problem-solving is methodical and resourceful, and he is unafraid of unconventional solutions.

“On one memorable occasion, I needed to slide a gearbox component over a shaft, but it was too tight to fit. The solution? I just put it into the kitchen oven, heated it to 120 degrees until the metal expanded just enough to fit,” he recalls laughingly. Years later, when a similar challenge cropped up at Nobleo, he applied exactly the same fix, using the office kitchen. “The whole ground floor stank of hot metal,” he grins, “but that’s Nobleo: if it works, we do it.”

Perfect fit

After eight years and countless projects, what also stands out for Tom is the speed at which Nobleo moves. “The short lines within the company, also to management, that’s the real strength of Nobleo,” he says. “If something goes wrong or if something needs sorting, it is being dealt with on the spot.” That agility, combined with a culture that consistently attracts people who think across boundaries, is what keeps Tom engaged. “Nobleo is very good at finding a certain type of person,” he says.

“The people who work here are curious, always want to know what you are working on and are quick to realise that they can use that same solution somewhere else entirely. It’s that cross-pollination that gives Nobleo its edge.”