P. M. Roberts first encountered the brazing process when he joined Johnson Matthey and Company Limited in 1956 to train as an assayer of industrially used silver alloys and silver-containing brazing filler materials. In 1958, he changed departments and trained as a process control metallurgist, and studied the intricacies and the technology of the subject at Battersea Polytechnic, the forerunner of Surrey University. In 1963, an opportunity arose for him to join the Sales Technical Services Department of Johnson Matthey Metals to be trained as a specialist brazing engineer. During the next 30 years, he held a sequence of technical posts that provided support to the customers of three of the four leading producers of brazing materials in the Western world, and gained hands-on practical experience in the specification and use of automated brazing equipment and continuous-conveyor brazing furnaces. Between 1993 and 1996, he was the manager of the Precious Metals Division of the UK Branch of Degussa AG. He took early retirement on his 60th birthday in 1996, and created Delphi Brazing Consultants, a small but specialised business that is still in operation. This change of role on his retirement has been instrumental in his being able to write and help clients around the world solve brazing problems.