Commercial machine shops that run “lights off” typically will have continuous process monitoring, automated fire detection, automatic fire extinguishing, smoke containment and evacuation, and of course the correct permits and insurance coverage.
I work with one machine shop in Kent, WA that has a dozen Citizen L32 swiss machines in a row, turning out parts all night long. It will automatically stop with no notification for minor faults but stops and pages the on-call for major issues.
Just local management, so I’d assume within a “reasonable” commuting distance. Note that in Seattle, a 2 hour peak-traffic commute might be only 20 minutes in the middle of the night.
Not if they're running lights-out, which is increasingly common in machining. A modern machine tool with all of the features mentioned above is designed to run unattended. It isn't uncommon for bar-feed lathes or mills with pallet pools to be actively running for >160hrs per week. If you're careful about your parameters and run the machine well within its capability, you rarely need to hit the big red button. Modern machines are smart enough to hit the big red button themselves when they really need to, and alert a human to the fact that something has interrupted production.
